


By the Light of Burning Galaxies

by SongOfTheBadWolf



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), Gallifrey (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-26
Updated: 2016-02-24
Packaged: 2018-03-15 08:58:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 26
Words: 50,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3441230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SongOfTheBadWolf/pseuds/SongOfTheBadWolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bad Wolf has returned, and Rose is thrown back into the Doctor's world with no idea why. There's a plan in motion none of them yet understand, and the Doctor will have to face both the past he's been running away from and the hardest decision he's ever made. With Bad Wolf taking over her life, Rose finds support from a place she never expected - the Doctor's current companion, Clara Oswald.<br/>Changing the past, however, requires a sacrifice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this has been in progress for about a year now, and I realized that I'm a slow enough writer that in order to keep this regularly updated, I had to actually write most of it before I started posting. So here we are! I'll be updating Mondays and Thursdays, at least all the way up through Part 1. There's a loooooot of characters in this, but to avoid spoilers, I'll update tags a couple days after the relevant chapters are posted. Thanks for reading!  
> Oh, also, chronology: This takes place pretty soon after Name of the Doctor, and everything up to that is canon expect for, like, the last five minutes.

The Tardis doors swung open soundlessly in the drifting snow and Clara Oswald twirled, laughing, as she stumbled out of the blue box. The air was cold but not biting, carrying a faint smell of the ocean and some flower she couldn’t identify. Blinking softly, the light on the Tardis roof joined with the light spilling from the open doors to cast a warm glow through the silver fog. The Doctor followed her out into the snow, smiling, with his sonic screwdriver in hand. He straightened his bowtie, snapped his fingers, and the doors closed behind him.

"So where are we this time?" Clara spun back around to face him, the few strands of hair that escaped her messy bun blowing back and forth in the breeze. She grinned as her skirt swirled across the snow, sending up small spirals of cold mist.

"We're on the planet Aerrian," he said, slowly scanning their surroundings with the sonic, "in the year 3567. By their time that would be..." he shook the sonic for a moment. "The year 834 alpha 27."

Clara glanced at the buildings around them, slightly obscured by the snow and fog in the middle of this courtyard or wherever it was they had landed. "It looks a bit like Earth, honestly. Like, _old_ Earth.”

He shrugged. “I’ve never been here before. Should be fun!”

The Doctor strolled off through the snow, Clara following him. "Where is everyone?" she asked as they walked down a large open street. "I don't see any people. It's daylight, so..."

"Not sure! Well, now -" he spun around as the sonic beeped, and as he pointed it off to their left it glowed green. "- see, that's interesting. Cause there's some sort of energy signature over there, and it's too much of a coincidence that we haven't seen _anybody_ , oh, there's always someone, there's always one or two people around town, no, Clara." he paused and put the sonic in his jacket. "I think they're not outside because they're scared of something."

She folded her arms and raised an eyebrow. "This isn't a random destination, is it? Doctor, you promised.”

"Well... maybe I sensed a radiation signature while we were in the Tardis."

She made an effort to look annoyed, but sighed after a few seconds and smiled reluctantly. "Well, come on, then!" she said, skipping forward a step and heading off in the direction the sonic had been pointing. "Let's go see what it is!"

The Doctor grinned and followed her. He took the sonic out again and ran ahead, the signal leading them into a smaller street. Clara, trailing behind slightly, heard a hiss from somewhere to her right. Curious, she paused and glanced into the darker shadows of the house beside her.

"This way," a voice breathed again. "Please, come in here."

Clara glanced ahead to see the Doctor standing in the road, spinning around and frowning at the sonic, still close enough to not be obscured by the fog or the snow. Hesitantly, she stepped into the shadow cast by the house.

"Hello?" she called into the darkness.

"Where have you come from?" the voice responded. “Do you have a cure?"

"Clara, I know what this is and we have to find it _right now_ \- " the Doctor was running back toward her, and stopped, recognizing that there was someone waiting in the shadows.

"Oh, hello," he said. "And who are you?"

The alien stepped hesitantly out of the dark beyond the house's doorway and looked intently back and forth between Clara and the Doctor. She was a bit smaller than the average human, with an angular face and pointed, swept-back ears. Instead of hair, she had some sort of dark, downy fur that started on her head and circled around down her neck, then covered by a dress that enveloped most of her body. Her skin was silver and her eyes bright blue. "I am Maeli, second minister of Releb. Please, can you help us?"

"That's what we're here to find out," the Doctor replied. "Releb, is that this town?"

"Yes. Your appearance... You are from another world, yes? Others came to visit years ago, so we know about the worlds beyond the stars. But they were green. You are different."

"That's right. I'm from Gallifrey and Clara here is from Earth. It's all right, we're here to help. You're all getting sick, right? Strange markings you can't explain?"

"It started two days ago." Maeli held out her arm and pulled the sleeve of her dress back slightly to reveal a dark patch spreading on her wrist.

"Oh, I knew it, I just found it, Clara, it's the radiation, something crashed -"

Maeli looked confused. "What is -"

"Stop!" A voice rang out across the street through the snow and the fog and the fur on Maeli's head raised in alarm. The Doctor and Clara spun around to see a group of three of the aliens striding toward them, one holding something that looked like a primitive gun.

"All off-worlders are to be detained until further notice," the leader ordered.

The Doctor appeared unconcerned, and Clara hoped that he wasn't just bluffing.

"So you must be..."

"Arakalic, first minister of Releb. Whatever you've done, you won't get away with it."

"We haven't done anything!" Clara replied indignantly. "We just got here!"

Arakalic ignored them and turned to Maeli. "I told you to stay out of this. You've been afflicted; I'm in charge here now. It was their spaceship that brought the sickness and they have come to take it back!"

"Wait wait wait!" the Doctor held up his hands in an effort to slow down the guards who were moving toward him and Clara. "A spaceship, I knew it! It crashed here, it must have, two days ago when the sickness started. Am I right?"

"Take them."

"No, no, but it isn't ours, and even if it had been the sickness wasn't purposeful, it's just radiation; the engines broke when -"

The guards grabbed the Doctor and Clara by their arms, Arakalic still holding the gun on them to make sure they wouldn't run.

"Maeli," Clara said, turning toward her. "Please -"

"I'm sorry," she said hesitantly. "But at this point there’s nothing I can do. It's probably best to keep the two of you under watch for now until we find out what's going on."

The Doctor tried to pull away, without much luck. "No, you don't understand, I have to find the ship and stop this; if you don't let me help you'll all die!"

Arakalic smirked. "I very much doubt that."

"Okay, okay." The Doctor stopped struggling and Clara looked at him warily. "Just, tell me one thing," he said quickly. "If I was the owner of that spaceship, would I have this?" He pulled out the sonic screwdriver.

Arakalic and the guards looked at each other, confused. "Ah.... Yes."

He tilted his head. "Yes, good point, honestly I just needed an excuse to get this out of my jacket." He activated the sonic before they could react. A sharp shriek of sound echoed across the street, swirling among the snowflakes like a bolt of lightning. The aliens recoiled, and the Doctor grabbed Clara's hand.

"Run!"

They raced down the street, the Doctor holding the sonic out in front. It blinked on and off, the light flashing faster and faster to lead them to the source of the radiation. Clara could hear sounds of yelling and footsteps behind them as Arakalic and his guards followed in pursuit. Her heart pounded with adrenaline and she couldn’t help feeling exhilarated by the chase through the snow. Glancing to her right, she saw her own excitement reflected on the Doctor’s face.

The sonic beeped and they skidded to the left, heading down a smaller alleyway. The Doctor spun in a circle, inadvertently kicking snow in Clara's direction. "Oh, really?" He exclaimed at the sonic as he pointed it upwards. "Of course, of course that's where it crashed!"

Clara looked up and, in the building above her, the wall was crumbling in a pile of light gray bricks. At the very top, there was a jumble of metal sticking partially out of the top balcony of the building's spire.

The Doctor started to run back the way they had come but the sounds of pursuing guards stopped them. "This way!" Clara shouted, pulling him to the left. They raced out of the alleyway and down the side of the building. "How are we going to get up there?" she managed to ask between trying to breathe enough to keep up.

"I think I saw outer stairs back that way! We'll have to circle around the back!"

Clara scanned the side of the building. "Wait! There's another set of stairs on this side!" She swung under the railing and started scrambling up the metal stairway. The Doctor doubled back, slipping on the snow, and ran up after her. "What do we do once we get up there?" she yelled down at him as they climbed.

"We have to shut off the main power source before it goes critical! If that happens, we'll all be dead, a lot faster than from radiation sickness."

"Alright, so, we figure out what's controlling this thing and shut it down before it explodes in our faces, while avoiding the angry Aerrians chasing us."

"Yep, sounds about right!"

Clara’s foot slipped on the metal of the stairs, which were beginning to spiral; she regained a purchase on the icy surface and kept going. Then she was forced to stop again, and the Doctor caught up to her. "It's broken, Doctor! There's no way up!"

The stairs had twisted around during the crash and the last few steps to the top balcony of the spire were blocked and torn away. Judging by the sounds below them, the guards had caught up, and Clara flinched as a shot rang out and a bullet pinged off the side of the building to their right.

"We'll have to jump!" said the Doctor.

"Jump _where?"_

"There's a ledge right over there, we can jump across and climb over that way!"

A gust of wind swirled some of the snow into Clara's face; she blinked and tried to peer through the sudden cloud of ice. She sighed. "If I fall, I blame you!"

She took a deep breath and launched herself off the stairs. The air rushed out in a gasp as she landed and clambered over to stand inside the spire, which thankfully seemed to still be mostly structurally sound. Humming noises emanated from the ship, parts of which were glowing various unnatural colors.

The Doctor tumbled in after her, almost knocking her over. The ship whined and a beam of light shot through the ceiling into the clouds with a rumble of thunder. Glancing out the window, Clara saw Arakalic and his guards sprinting away down the street in the opposite direction, yelling something about fire and aliens and demons.

"Ow!"

She spun around to see the Doctor standing at the edge of the spire, looking down at his jacket pocket in surprise.

"What is it?"

"The psychic paper, something activated it, something sent a message, but that's not..."

He flipped open the psychic paper and his face froze. "What. _What?"_ Hand shaking, he took a step back slightly, and the balcony started to crumble under his weight.

_"Doctor!"_

Clara rushed forward as the Doctor fell backwards with a cry of alarm. He grabbed at the edge of the spire and managed to hold on.

"Doctor, take my hand!" Clara yelled, reaching past the ledge.

"No, Clara, get the spaceship! It'll overload any moment now! You have to stop it! I can get back up!"

After a heartbeat of hesitation, she spun around and ran back toward the ship. One of the panels was dangling by a wire, a red warning light blinking underneath. As she watched, the droning noise seemed to increase and the flashing became more insistent.

"Well, when in doubt," she muttered, and yanked out the wire.

With a shudder, the lights were extinguished and the humming stopped.

Clara laughed in relief and spun around to see the Doctor climbing back over the edge. "I just had to unplug it!" she exclaimed, grinning. When he didn't return her smile, she stopped and looked at him worriedly. "Doctor, what's wrong? What was on the psychic paper?"

His breathing was unsteady and she could hear his hearts racing when she moved closer and put her hand on his arm. "Two words," he said. "Just two words."

"What was it?"

"Bad Wolf."


	2. Chapter 2

“So, what is 'bad wolf?'"

Clara shut the Tardis doors behind her and ran in front of the Doctor before he could avoid her question. He hadn’t spoken all the way back from the crashed ship. The Aerrians, at least, hadn’t given them any trouble; she suspected that Arakalic and his soldiers were hiding from the ‘demonic offworlders’.

The Doctor sighed. “Bad Wolf is… a message. Last time, it was the end of the universe. This time, I just don’t know.”

“Tell me.”

He opened his mouth, but hesitated. “It was a long time ago,” he said. “In another life.”

“If you hadn’t noticed lately,” she replied, crossing her arms, “I’m on this ship too. If something’s about to happen it’s not going to only affect you. I might not remember most of your past from your timestream, but I think I deserve to know the parts that are about to _directly affect my life_.”

“It _won’t_. Whatever her reasons, she can’t come back. She can’t. Whatever this is… it’s just another ghost, another echo, another message sent back through time from the very beginning that just got here too late.”

“She?”

“This isn’t real.”

“Doctor,” said Clara, gently grabbing his arms on either side and looking him in the eyes. “You’ve seen enough echoes of me to know that even if this isn’t really… whoever this is, it could still be important.”

He took a deep breath and nodded slowly. “I don’t know if I can do this, Clara,” he admitted quietly.

She sighed and wrapped her arms around him. “I’m sorry. What do we need to do?”

“I think we need to go somewhere, somewhere I thought I’d never go again.” He pulled away and started hitting controls on the console, his whole body tense. “Actually, somewhere I've never been before. I've only been there in a parallel universe, but the same place in our universe has the same properties. It's the one place on Earth where the walls of the worlds are thinnest." He shoved a lever on the console and spun away to type some sort of coordinates into a screen. "If something's coming back, this is where it will happen."

The Tardis landed with its customary wheezing and groaning, and the Doctor stepped right past Clara without looking at her on his way out the doors. Concerned, she followed him, emerging onto a beach. The sky was grey like pale ash, and the sea rippled back and forth in a desolate mirror of the clouds. "What's this place called?" she asked quietly, her voice echoing in the still air.

"Darlig Ulv Stranden. It means Bad Wolf Bay."

Before she could respond, a strange humming noise began to emanate from somewhere above their heads.

The Doctor frowned and pulled out his sonic screwdriver, pointing it at the source of the noise which, for now, seemed to be invisible. Clara took a step back, glancing back toward the Tardis. "Doctor? What is it?"

"I'm not sure!" He shook the sonic. "It's some sort of energy field, but I've never seen anything like it!"

A brilliant flash of light erupted in the air a few feet above the ground, swirling and shining and humming in a vortex of energy. The noise shattered the quiet that had settled over the beach, and Clara raised her hand in front of her face to block the light and the wind that had started blowing outward from the disturbance. The Doctor stumbled backwards and Clara grabbed his arm.

A second burst of light shot outward and a golden glow washed over both of them. Then just as suddenly as it appeared, the light vanished, and something fell forward onto the beach.

As Clara's eyes recovered from the flash, she saw that a woman was now lying on the sand, a woman with blonde hair. Beside her, the Doctor's face was frozen in shock. "Rose," he breathed, and rushed forward. He knelt on the ground beside the girl as she raised herself up on her arms, sand shifting beneath her. She looked up and their eyes met; they appeared as if they were both locked in a moment of time.

"You've regenerated again," she said after a moment.

The Doctor smiled faintly. "You look exactly the same."

The woman raised an eyebrow and laughed softly. “Uh… what’s with the bowtie?” She scrambled to her feet as the Doctor stood up.

She looked to be in her twenties, like Clara, and she wore a dark, fitted jacket. Her hair was straight and shoulder-length, and her hoop earrings matched a silver pendant that dangled from a thin chain around her neck. She looked normal, human, but in her face Clara thought she could see a hint of the sadness she sometimes saw in the Doctor.

"I'm Clara," she blurted out, stepping closer to the Doctor. “I’m, ah, travelling with him. At the moment.”

She smiled. "My name is Rose."

The Doctor still looked a bit stunned. "How is this possible?" he asked her. "How are you, well, _here? Why_ are you here? What about..."

Rose's smile faded. "He's dead," she said, and walked toward the Tardis.

“...What?”

No reply.

The Doctor stood frozen again, and Clara glanced back and forth between them. "Doctor, who is she?"

"It's complicated," he replied in a murmur. "She used to travel with me, but she was trapped in another universe."

"Who's dead?"

He didn't respond, instead following Rose back toward the blue box. Clara sighed and jogged after them. _Answers. Why can’t he ever just give me answers?_

When Clara walked through the doors, Rose was spinning slowly, gazing around the Tardis. "You've redecorated," she said. "I have to admit, I preferred the coral."

"Tell me why you're here."

"It's complicated."

"How did he die?"

"You don't want to know."

Clara looked at Rose, then the Doctor, then back again. She sighed and strode to the center of the room, right in front of the console. "Okay, look, can someone please tell me what's going on?"

Rose raised an eyebrow at the Doctor. "You haven’t told her anything?" She looked back at Clara. "Honestly, I’m not surprised, he did that to me too at first. He doesn’t like talking about the past.”

“It wasn’t exactly crucial information!” he objected.

“It is now,” Clara muttered.

“I travelled with him a while ago,” Rose began. “I met him when he was in his ninth body. How many times have you...?"

"This is the eleventh," he answered quietly.

Clara could still picture his other faces, some of the few images that had stayed with her while she fell through his timeline. The ninth, the one who was born from the Time War; she had seen him the least of all of them.

"I travelled with him for a while," Rose continued. "To save him, and to save the Earth, I had to absorb the time vortex. I created a message, scattered throughout time: Bad Wolf."

"So you're Bad Wolf." Clara leaned back on the console. "That's what the message was, on the psychic paper."

Rose looked surprised. “That’s how you knew I was going to show up on that beach?”

The Doctor nodded. “And there was a temporal trace on the message. You didn’t…?”

The blonde woman shifted her weight and leaned on the Tardis console, glancing at the floor. "I can’t exactly control it. The vortex gave me unique abilities, but if I'd stayed that way I would have died. The Doctor saved me and took it out of my head, but he was forced to regenerate. The abilities were gone and I didn't remember anything about what happened. Not until..."

She trailed off. The Doctor picked up the story out of the silence. "She travelled with me while I was my tenth self, until the walls between the parallel worlds started to crack. The Cybermen and the Daleks came through out of the Void, and the only way to stop them was to seal the breach. Rose was trapped on the other side."

"My family was there too. But I had to come back, I had to find the Doctor, because all the universes were in danger and we needed him. A while back, when he first regenerated into his tenth form, his hand got cut off. It regrew, since he still had regeneration energy left, but the original hand itself still existed. When he got shot by a Dalek, he channeled the regeneration into that hand so he could stay who he was. But then Donna touched the hand, and it created a Metacrisis Doctor. Part Time Lord, part human, same memories."

The Doctor looked at the ground, refusing to meet their eyes. "I left him and Rose in the parallel universe. He needed her."

"I don't blame you," Rose said quietly, and the Doctor looked up, surprised. "We were happy. I chose him."

Clara's eyes widened. _...Oh. So this was before River._

Rose smiled. "The coral you gave us worked, too. We had our own Tardis; we travelled."

"So, why did you come back?" Clara asked. _"How_ did you come back?"

"It started when I began developing strange abilities, things that were hidden, latent, until now. It was the Bad Wolf, Doctor, and I could remember what happened back on Satellite Five. We don't know why the abilities didn't surface before. And then..." She took a deep breath. "We were visiting a planet and, well... he always acted like he was indestructible."

"What happened?"

"Please, Doctor. You don't want to know."

Silence fell.

"So you came back to find the Doctor," Clara said eventually.

"Yes, but... I think it's more than that. The Bad Wolf allowed me to cross between universes, but I think it had another reason. I don't understand what's happening to me yet, but whatever it is, it's getting stronger."

Concerned, the Doctor took out his sonic screwdriver and scanned her. “He didn’t find anything,” she said. “I doubt you will either. Wait, what happened to your sonic? What’s - it’s _green_ now, why did you -”

"You're right, there's nothing,” he interrupted, frowning at the sonic and then returning it to his pocket. “This doesn't make sense!" He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was quiet. "I don't know what's happened to you," he said, "but I will help you find out. I promise. And of course you'll travel with us." He hesitated, like he wanted to say more but wasn't sure how.

Rose leaned forward slightly as if she meant to reach out to him, but she blinked and looked away instead. "Thank you. I'm sorry too, Doctor." She walked across the console room, leaving the Doctor seeming a bit lost behind her.

"Let's go see where the Tardis put my old room, shall we?"

The Doctor's eyes widened. "Uh, I should probably go first. The Tardis rearranged everything a few times and you're likely to get lost..." He disappeared down a hallway.

Once she was fairly certain the Doctor was out of earshot, Clara turned to Rose.

"For the record, I don't really know anything about that other Doctor of yours, or that parallel universe, but... I'm really sorry. For what happened."

Rose smiled faintly. "Thank you, Clara."

She took a deep breath, unsure if she should continue. "You were in love with him, weren't you?" she asked in a rush. "That's why you stayed with the other Doctor. He could give you a life you could never have here."

Rose was silent for a few seconds, her face blank, and Clara began to worry that she had overstepped. "Yes,” the blonde girl answered finally. “But we've both changed a lot. This Doctor... he isn't my Doctor anymore, and not just because he regenerated. He's been through a lot, and so have I."

"He looks at you as if..."

"What?"

"As if you're a ghost."

"I saw him, for a moment, looking at you the same way. I suppose I'm not the only one with a story to tell."

“He saw me die - well, not me, another version of me, before he actually met, well, _me_. It’s complicated.”

Rose almost laughed. "I suppose we're both a bit impossible."

Clara echoed her grin. "I think that's what happens when you travel with the Doctor."

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

In the morning, Clara woke to the sound of a small explosion.

“Doctor, if you hadn’t thrown the manual into a supernova --”

“I know what I’m doing! … Wait, where’s the chronometric wave modulator?”

“I think it’s stuck to the ceiling.”

Clara groaned and tumbled out of bed, tangled in a blanket the color of the Tardis, which she'd found in the wardrobe room. Not bothering to change out of the clothes she'd slept in, she yanked the door open as another loud bang echoed from the console room. She stumbled down the hallway toward the source of the disturbance, haphazardly pulling her hair back from her face.

"Doctor!" she yelled, as she stepped through the hallway's arch, "What are you..."

She trailed off, staring at the scene in front of her. The Doctor had climbed up on the railing to try to reach some metallic object that had lodged in a crack in the ceiling, precariously tilting back and forth with a hand outstretched to the time rotor for support. Rose, meanwhile, was trying to hold three different levers at once, keeping an eye on a small fire that had sprung into life in the other side of the room. The Tardis creaked in protest, the cloister bell tolling, a low rumbling noise that echoed throughout the ship.

Finding her voice again, Clara ran forward. "Doctor, what did you do?"

"I was _trying_ to rearrange the temporal decoupler, because the Tardis was running low on energy, but it, ah... didn't work."

"...I can see that. Why is part of the Tardis on the ceiling?"

"And I told you, Doctor," said Rose, one arm still stretched along the console, "that if you reconnected the voidwave compensator -"

"Yes, yes, I know that _now."_

"If you actually read the manual -"

"I disagree with the manual!"

Another burst of electricity shot out of the time rotor just as the Doctor grabbed hold of whatever technological item had lodged above their heads, and Clara reached up to pull him out of the way of the miniature explosion. The fell, sprawled on top of each other, as the Tardis shook. Clara scrambled out of the way and the Doctor reached up to pull a lever on the console. The whole Tardis tilted and Rose yelled as she lost her grip on the levers and fell, causing the Tardis to spiral further out of control. And then just as suddenly, the shaking stopped and the Tardis's landing noise rang throughout the ship.

Everyone picked themselves up off the console room floor.

"Oh good, that worked," said the Doctor, a little surprised.

Rose sighed and jogged over to the doorway, opened it a crack, and glanced back inside. "I think we're on some sort of space station!"

Clara went to check the monitor, but the screen was covered in a spiderweb of cracks. The Doctor was still looking worriedly at various components of the Tardis, so she approached the doorway too.

Outside, it reminded her of a cross between the chaos of an airport and a hotel lobby. Directly across from them, a window dominated the far wall, stretching as high as the ceiling and as wide as the entire room. It revealed a swirling cloud of stars and gas, some nebula out in the far reaches of the galaxy. Or, well, possibly someone else's galaxy. Aliens of many different varieties walked past in a kind of orderly rush. Others moved more slowly, lingering at the various markets and stalls lining the non-windowed walls. On either side, the hallways branched out even further, leading to other parts of the space station.

A small, dark blue man approached them with a smile, holding out some kind of pamphlet. "Welcome to Oridaal!" he said brightly. "Please enjoy your stay. If you have any questions, feel free to ask any of the stewards or automated assistance terminals. All temporal-class vehicles must be parked in storage area fifteen. Have a good day!"

He handed Clara the brochure and strode off down the hallway to their right, stopping to talk to a pair of humanoid aliens with tentacles instead of hair.

Rose laughed softly. "I love places like this," she said. "So many cultures, so much to see."

The Doctor walked up behind them. "The Tardis is going to need some, ah... repairs. You two should go explore; I'll be done in about three hours."

Something sparked and sputtered with a bang behind him. "...Better make that four."

"What caused the problem in the first place?" Clara asked. "Or was it just your attempts to -"

"No, it was not!" he said indignantly. "Well, maybe a little. But there was something wrong, and that's why I was trying to fix it in the first place. Something caused an energy drain. I'm not entirely sure _what..._ and that's what worries me." He turned back into the blue box and the doors shut behind him.

Rose raised her eyebrows. "As enigmatic as ever, I see."

He opened the doors again. “Oh, here’s some money; I’m not entirely sure what currency they’re using in this century so here’s a few likely possibilities. I’m also not sure how much this is. I think it’s a lot. Go buy… I don’t know, little souvenirs or something." The doors slammed shut and they glanced at each other in amusement.

Clara stepped toward a balcony behind the Tardis, opposite the giant window, and looked around in wonder; no matter where they went, it always seemed brand new and amazing. And judging from Rose’s smile, despite her annoyance with the Doctor, Clara could see that even after travelling much further than she had, Rose still felt the same way.

“Well, where to first?” Rose asked.

Clara pulled the brochure from her pocket and realized she was still dressed in the clothes she’d worn the night before. She sighed. “I wonder if there’s some kind of shopping center here? I doubt we can get back to the wardrobe room at this point...”

Rose peered over her shoulder at the pamphlet. “Probably. Alien shops are always interesting. Does this thing have a map?”

“I think so…” She unfolded the paper and a holographic projection sprung into life above it. “Oh! Well, that’s useful…”

Rose reached out and touched the hologram, which moved in response to her gesture. A blinking dot appeared in one corner of what was clearly a map, a small box also materializing next to the dot. “That must be us and the Tardis,” Rose said. “So I think over here…” she zoomed in on a glowing label over a hallway to their right, which read, ‘Andromeda Shops’.

Clara shrugged. “Why not?”

Fifteen minutes later, Clara emerged from an alien shop wearing a medium-length skirt and a jumper made of some unusual pale fabric that shimmered under the lights of the station. She and Rose wandered down the hallway, passing a tree that turned and watched them as they walked by. They stopped at a balcony similar to the first, and Clara stepped out and leaned slightly over the railing in order to see the people milling about on lower levels.

"So how did you meet him?" Rose asked, crossing her arms over the railing next to her.

"I was having trouble connecting to my wifi, and a woman in a shop gave me the Doctor's phone number, told me it was a help line. Turned out the wifi was evil."

Rose smiled. "And then you got dragged into all his adventures."

"Yeah," she answered, laughing. "What about you?"

"He blew up my job. There were these living plastic monsters in the basement, and I found him when he was trying to stop them. Afterwards, he asked me to come with him. I almost said no, but... well, I did at first, anyway... but then he came back and I realized how much I'd regret it if I let him fly away."

"Me too. I told him to come back a day later, after I'd had time to think, and I'd always wanted to travel, so... I couldn't say no again. He took me to these rings around a planet called Akhaten, and the planet itself was alive - it fed off memories and things with sentimental value. There was singing, and so much light... We almost died, which honestly seems to happen a lot, but it was beautiful. I could never give this up."

"My first trip? He took me to the end of the world. Honestly, I thought about leaving him after that. But then I realized that he showed me a new perspective, a view of the Earth and the universe that I'd never considered before. And I could never go back.”

Clara looked out over the promenade. “This kind of travelling, it changes you. And you don’t always know it at first, but then you think back to your old life and it’s like you’re hearing someone else’s story.”

They stood there in silence for a minute. Rose smiled. “Does he still have trouble actually getting the Tardis to go where it’s supposed to? Cause he never seemed to get the timing right!”

“Let’s just say that he managed to confuse Las Vegas with a Soviet submarine.”

“The first time he brought me back home, it had been a whole year. He was aiming for twelve hours, and it was twelve months instead! My mum wanted to kill him.”

“I was lucky that way, I guess,” said Clara. “I was already living away from my parents, and I just told them I was going travelling. It was my job I had to worry about; the Doctor and I eventually decided that I’d travel with him every Wednesday, since I still had responsibilities back home. I feel like I have two lives, the Doctor and the rest of the world.”

“I never managed to balance them all that well,” Rose said, suddenly a bit subdued. “Back in Pete’s World - sorry, that’s what we call the other universe - the Doctor and I worked for Torchwood. The other Doctor, I mean. At least until our Tardis was ready, anyway, and then we were off travelling just like before. I kept in contact with my family and friends on Earth, but not very often. They won’t know what happened. To them, I just flew away with him and stopped answering their calls, and stopped coming back.”

Clara hesitantly reached out and took Rose’s hand.

"I'm sorry," she murmured. "I know there’s really nothing I can do, but..."

Rose smiled faintly. "Thanks. And it's alright, my life has been turned around so many times that I've learned it's easier if I just keep moving forward. At least I still have this. I still have the universe, which is more than most people ever have."

"One thing I’ve learned from the Doctor is that the universe isn’t always enough. And whatever happens with Bad Wolf, and whatever the Doctor might be unsure about, you’ll always have a place in the Tardis. You’ll always be welcome with us.” Clara looked down at the people below them, unexpectedly nervous. She didn’t exactly know the other girl all that well yet, but she could see already that Rose belonged with them, whatever history the Doctor might be haunted by.

She was startled when Rose suddenly launched herself forward into a hug, clinging to the back of Clara's jumper. "That means a lot," she said quietly. "And I know, I know from experience that it's hard to meet someone from the Doctor's past and I'm sorry if I've changed anything between you."

"You're not the first person I've met who's travelled with him," she replied, smiling as she returned the hug. "And it'll be better to have you around, too, anyway. The Doctor's great and all, but it's nice to be travelling with someone who, well, isn't a Time Lord."

Rose laughed, and they pulled away and stepped back from the balcony, continuing down the hallway.

"So, who else have you met?" she asked. "I wonder if it's anyone I'd know. A bunch of us worked together at one point. I’d like to find out what happened to them all..."

"River Song?" Seeing no recognition, Clara added, "She's the Doctor's... Uh, actually, I think you'd better ask him about that. It's complicated."

"I wonder if he's even gone back to visit any of the others," said Rose, "now that he's regenerated."

Ahead of them, a vaguely human-looking alien glanced around furtively as he appeared from behind a locked door, the words AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY printed in large letters on the face of the door above a symbol consisting of a blue crescent with three rays extending from the center. A low hum emanated from within as the alien walked away. Rose smiled and pulled up the map again. "Hah, just like I thought," she said. "It doesn't show up here. According to this, there isn't even a door, let alone anything behind it."

"It could just be that any rooms not available to guests don't appear on the map."

"I don't think so. There's other rooms with locked doors, but the rooms themselves are still visible. This is something different."

Clara grinned. "Well then, let's find a way in."

"I was hoping you'd say that." She reached into a pocket of her jacket and pulled out a device that looked a bit like the Doctor's sonic screwdriver, but smaller. Most of it was silver, and the tip glowed blue rather than green as she pointed it at the lock. The door clicked open and she ducked inside, gesturing for Clara to follow.

The two of them walked along a narrow hallway, which seemed to slant further and further downwards. A cold draft blew past them from below, and Clara shivered. The humming noise continued. A faded sign on the wall said 'Cargo Area 7,' but it didn't seem like anyone else was anywhere close by. They came to a door, left ajar, at the end of the hallway.

As the door shut behind them, Clara felt a bit disappointed. The room looked ordinary, a large cargo bay stacked with boxes and crates. Clean white lights glowed overhead, and they couldn't see anyone else.

"Well, that's a bit anticlimactic," Rose muttered.

"Where's that humming coming from, though?" asked Clara. "It's getting louder..."

Rose glanced back at the door, which rumbled before a much louder click echoed through the room. Rose frowned and scanned the door. "That was a deadlock seal. The sonic can't get through! This doesn't make _sense;_ who activated it?"

Clara's eyes widened as the room suddenly grew darker. "Um, Rose?"

The other woman spun around and both watched in dismay as, one by one, the lights began to go out.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

"What do you mean, energy overload warning?" the Doctor exclaimed, jumping backwards from a suddenly flashing panel and almost hitting his head on the bottom of the console. "I thought the problem was that you were running _out_ of energy!" 

The Tardis squawked in protest and, taking another look at the warning lights, the Doctor scrambled towards the door, diving outside and shutting it before a burst of light ricocheted around the console room.

"I guess you'll fix yourself, then. What's wrong with you this time?" he muttered.

He pointed his sonic screwdriver at the doors and frowned at the results. Well, at least the repairs wouldn't take as long as he had thought. He'd investigate the station for a bit and then try to find Clara and Rose.

_Rose._

The Doctor walked forward to the window that looked out into the nebula and leaned against it. How long had it been, now? Three hundred years, for him? Five years for her. When had he lost count? When had he forgotten?

He'd thought he left her with a good life, with a man who could be what he couldn't. And now it seemed that he abandoned her with strange powers and a life turned upside down.

"I'm sorry," he murmured, still facing the huge expanse of stars and light. "I didn't know."

And what now? She was travelling with them, she had no where else to go. Did she love him? She had loved the Metacrisis, but that was because she'd loved _him_ first. Did he love her?

_No._

Well, yes, in a way, but he'd moved on. And she'd done the same. And he had River, sort of. And she had... well, she had no one now.

_Three hundred years._

If she didn't know him, would she even have recognized him? What would she think of all the things he'd done, all the ways he'd fallen?

She was the Bad Wolf, his companion, his pink-and-yellow Earth girl who had saved his hearts after the Time War. And for the first time in a long while, the Doctor honestly had absolutely no idea what to do.

A high-pitched alarm sounded as the lights flickered, before the noise was abruptly shut off.

"It's alright, everyone, nothing to worry about, we're just testing the station's systems!" announced a small blue man holding a set of pamphlets. He looked, however, a bit more worried than anyone would expect given his previous statement. The Doctor watched him hurry towards a corridor off to the left, soon joined by a few others of different species.

Good. This would keep his mind off of other things. The Doctor followed, sonic screwdriver at the ready.

**..............................................................**

Clara and Rose stood together at one end of the room, facing the steady progression of darkness coming towards them. "Any idea what it is?" Clara asked.

"Nope. Honestly, I was hoping you would know."

"Oh. Great."

Rose pointed her sonic at one of the lights, which clicked on for a moment before flickering off again. The next row went out, then the next, then the last. Clara was surprised to see that Rose looked scared - really scared, more than she was; terrified of the darkness.

The emergency lights turned on, a faint blue glow illuminating the room. A dark shadow coalesced in the center of the room, forming itself into a vaguely recognizable shape. The creature, or whatever it was, blinked open hollow eyes as the temperature seemed to drop. It hissed, approaching them.

Rose seemed strangely relieved as the creature revealed itself. She raised the sonic, her other hand shaking but her voice confident as she declared, "By the authority of the Shadow Proclamation and the Torchwood Institute, I--"

The creature lashed out with a tendril of shadows that was growing more tangible by the second, sending Rose and Clara leaping out of the way in opposite directions.

Rose tilted her head. "Well, it was worth a shot."

The creature hissed again and turned toward Clara, who had fallen backwards onto the ground, and the next few moments seemed to pass in an eternity.

Clara looked up at the darkness headed right for her and realized she didn't have time to jump out of the way again, and the Doctor wasn't even here and maybe this was the one thing they weren't going to be able to beat, after Cybermen and an Ice Warrior and the Great Intelligence, here in the depths of an alien space station, a creature she didn't even recognize--

A cry of _"No!"_ echoed through the room and suddenly there was Rose, a golden light shining from inside her, and the creature shrieked and fell backwards. The light shot out in all directions in a miniature supernova, and Clara shut her eyes and tried to hold out a hand to block the glow, which washed past her with only a faint rush of air.

And then everything was silent.

Clara blinked open her eyes. The blue emergency lighting shone throughout the room, no trace of the darkness or the creature remaining.

"Rose," she breathed. The other woman was collapsed on the floor in front of her, and Clara reached out with a gasp to find her pulse, relaxing as she realized she was just unconscious.

Rose stirred, blinking, her head tilting slightly until she focused on Clara. "What happened?"

"I'm not sure. But I think the creature's gone."

She started to sit up but stopped and took a sharp breath, and Clara caught her as she fell forward.

"Are you alright?" Clara asked, worried, and her pulse sped up. Just when she thought everything was fine, maybe--

"Yeah, I just felt... lightheaded, or something. I can't remember... if I try to remember it hurts..."

"I think you saved us," said Clara. "There was a bright light, and the darkness went away. ...I think it was--"

"Bad Wolf."

"Yeah."

Clara realized that her arms were still wrapped around the Rose's shoulders, and she disentangled herself slightly and helped her to her feet.

A series of three knocks resonated through the deadlocked door. "Clara! Rose! Are you in there?"

"Doctor!" Clara yelled back. "We're alright! Can you get the door open?"

They approached the door, Rose scanning it again with her sonic. They heard an answering hum from the other side.

"It's deadlocked!"

"Yes, we know!" Rose answered.

"Wait, was that sonic technology?"

"I can explain later! Can you get the door open?"

"Well, um, technically... No. It was set to deadlock if anyone opened it. And the station's staff aren't all that pleased I'm down here, either."

Clara sighed. "Tell them whatever they were trying to keep locked up down here is gone now, anyway."

_"...How?"_

"We'll explain later!" Rose yelled. "And I'd prefer not to be stuck down here while we discuss this!"

"They're not going to believe that without proof, and they won't open the door unless they do."

"Just talk to them!" Clara ordered.

"Alright, alright!" They heard footsteps retreating down the hallway.

Rose sighed. "I suppose we just have to wait for him to sort all this out, then."

"I bet they set all this up when they realized they'd somehow got this thing on the station. Too scared to deal with it, so they just kept an eye on it and set the door to lock if it ever became active."

"Good thing we came along then," said Rose, laughing.

"Yeah!" Clara grinned, but her smile faded as Rose's did. The blonde woman fiddled with the sonic screwdriver in her hand before pocketing it and leaning back against the door.

"Clara, if it wasn’t for Bad Wolf, we’d be dead, and I can’t even control it."

Rose still looked unsteady, tired. On impulse, Clara reached out and gently brushed a strand of hair back from the other girl's face before pulling her into a hug. Rose wrapped her arms around Clara in return, her breathing shaky.

"I, for one," Clara said, "am really glad you were here today. You saved my life."

"I just wish I knew how."

Rose leaned her face against Clara's shoulder and closed her eyes to avoid seeing the sparks of light that danced around her hands in a pale golden glow. Clara felt the warmth from the light on her back, but didn't let go. "It's alright. And I promise, whatever happens, you're with us now."

They both jumped and separated as another series of knocks rang against the metal door. "They gave me the code for the lock!" The Doctor yelled. “Apparently if whatever they locked up down here was actually still, ah, here, you would both be… dead. Um. Which you’re not.”

The door swung open and Clara and Rose gratefully followed the Doctor back down the hallway.

“So, what was it?” he asked, sounding a bit put out that he had missed everything.

“Not sure,” Clara said. “it was dark - I mean, literally, the creature or whatever it was was made of darkness. It turned off all the lights and sort of formed itself into a body and started attacking us.”

“It wasn’t necessarily sentient,” Rose added. “It never spoke, and it didn’t respond when we tried to communicate with it.”

“And it was in the cargo area…” the Doctor muttered. “One of the station’s staff told me that cargo from a Raxacoricofallapatorian transport was put in there the other day, right before they realized there was a problem and closed off the area. It might have been a Drakiril; they live in shadows and have noncorporeal forms.”

They reached the door and the Doctor swung it open again, and they walked back toward the Tardis as a crowd of mildly curious people looked on from afar. “Sometimes they get stuck,” he continued, “in crates, boxes, transports, when they’re sleeping. If it had gotten out, it could have destroyed the whole station. They feed off energy, well, most energy, so they’re very hard to get rid of, so that reminds me, how in the name of Rassilon did you two manage that?”

Rose glanced at Clara. “Maybe we should wait until we get back to the Tardis,” Clara said. “It’s a bit… complicated.”

“Oh, wait,” said Rose. “I thought the Tardis was going to take a long time to repair?”

“Well, she, ah, sort of decided to repair herself.”

Clara tried to hold in laughter and failed. “So even the Tardis doesn’t trust you to repair the Tardis.”

“...Shut up.”

Rose grinned. “Are we getting a new desktop then?”

“A new what?”

The Doctor’s eyes widened. “Oh no,” he said, and ran down the remaining length of the hallway to check his time machine.

“Oh, really?” he yelled, annoyed, as he poked his head through the doors. “You redecorated!”


	5. Chapter 5

Rose's eyes widened in amazement as she stepped over the threshold and into the newly-redecorated Tardis. It was still very different from the Tardis she'd known, or even from the Tardis that she had flown with her Doctor, which had been filled with the same shapes of twisting coral, created instead from dark glass. This Tardis, formerly subdued with blues and grays that hummed with quiet power, was now illuminated in white and gold.

A short spiral staircase outlined in shining energy twirled up from the entry level to a platform suspended a few feet above their heads, circling around the center of the console. The time rotor, now a brilliant white, still whirled in the middle of the console room, albeit a room that was about twice as big as it had been previously. Everything shimmered with an aura of light, illusions playing over frosted glass.

"It's beautiful!" exclaimed Clara, who had wandered underneath the platform and hesitantly stepped onto the spiral staircase. Rose smiled, in complete agreement with her.

The Doctor, standing up at the main console on the platform, stepped back and leaned over the railing to give the room another inspection. "It's all... _showy,"_ he grumbled. "The last one was much subtler."

Clara laughed. "I may not remember much from your timeline," she said, "but I have a distinct impression of a certain glowing orange and yellow and green console room?"

"...Shut up."

More laughter, from both companions. "Well, _I_ think it's brilliant," said Rose. The Tardis hummed in appreciation.

The Doctor sighed. "I still wish I knew what caused the renovation," he muttered.

Rose, who had just placed her hand on a railing and felt an answering pulse of light, jumped back slightly with a wry smile. "Actually... I think I might be able to answer that," she said apologetically. Clara and the Doctor looked over at her in surprise.

She reached up and touched the wall, causing a small ripple of glowing light to wash outwards from her hand along the surface. Clara glanced quickly at the stairway she was standing on, putting her hand on the railing and frowning as if disappointed that the Tardis didn't react to her in the same way.

"Oh, of _course!"_ the Doctor exclaimed, spinning around and running down the staircase, Clara leaning out of the way. "The energy from the Bad Wolf wasn't compatible with her matrix, so she _made_ it compatible!"

Rose, worried, stepped away from the wall slightly. "Is that going to happen every time I touch anything in here?"

"No, it's alright, I think she's just still calibrating."

"She seems a bit more... agreeable, this time," said Clara. The Tardis whined in response, and Rose's eyebrows raised. "...Or not," the brunette added.

"What did you do?" Rose asked, laughing.

"Oh, I didn't do anything, she just doesn't like me!"

"She seems to still like Rose."

 _"Not helping,_ Doctor!"

"Seriously, she once created a holographic leopard to scare me. And she keeps hiding my bedroom!"

"Alright, I have a question," said Rose, attempting to head off the oncoming argument. "What are the round things?"

Clara and the Doctor looked around the room. Interlocking grids of hexagons and circles faded into patterns on the back wall. "You know, I think they're... honestly, I have no idea," the Doctor replied. "They've been here before. I never quite figured out why..."

"And does this mean our rooms have moved again?" Rose asked.

"Ah... probably. I wonder if the swimming pool is back?"

"I thought that was in the library?"

"You had a _swimming pool_ in the _library?"_

"I also had a room full of hats. Not sure where that went. I'd like a fez."

"A _fez?"_ Rose's eyes widened.

"Oh, not again. Doctor, the bow ties are bad enough."

"Bow ties are cool!" The Doctor scrambled back up the staircase and started examining controls on the console.

"At least yours doesn't carry bananas everywhere he goes."

"For all I know, he might! He says his pockets are dimensionally transcendent."

"Oi! I'm right here! And fezzes are also cool. As are dimensionally transcendent pockets."

Rose grinned and followed Clara up the staircase, emerging onto the platform, frosted glass obscuring part of the floor below. The tiles still gleamed on the walls, except for a door-sized opening opposite the Tardis entrance.

"Well, I'm going to go explore," said Clara, heading for the inner doorway.

"I'll join you. Maybe she won't send any holographic leopards if it's both of us," Rose added. Clara smiled and Rose jogged to catch up with her.

"I'm not sure that's the best... oh, alright," the Doctor muttered as they left the room. "I'll be checking the controls, maybe take her on a trip to Earth to make sure everything's working!" he called after them.

The hallways were white like the console room, with patches of the round things. Rose accidentally brushed against a wall and sparks emanated from the point of contact; she jumped back and almost ran into Clara.

She smiled apologetically. "Sorry. It's just..."

"I know. At least the Doctor said it will stop soon."

Rose sighed. "The worst thing is, this means that even when it's not active, Bad Wolf is still part of me."

"You'll have to tell the Doctor what happened eventually."

"Yeah. I just... wouldn't mind putting it off for a bit."

They walked down the hallway in silence for a few moments. Then a jolt of energy rushed through Rose and she thought she'd touched the ship again, but it was Clara, who had reached out to take hold of her hand. Rose intertwined her fingers with hers, and neither mentioned it.

"It'll be a miracle if she hasn't hidden my room again," Clara muttered.

The time machine whined above their heads and Rose laughed. "What's the worst thing she's done?"

"Besides the leopard? Well, at one point she created a holographic voice interface of me so she could argue with me."

"Seriously?"

"Oh my god, I think that's my room!" Clara stopped in disbelief in front of a door. "Well, that's new."

"That must be mine across the hall." Rose smiled as Clara opened the door. "Maybe I'm a good influence."

"How come she likes you?"

"I dunno. We just get along. I think she knew the Doctor needed someone, back then..."

"...after the Time War."

"Yeah. How'd you know?"

They stepped into Clara's room and Rose collapsed gratefully on a couch near the door with a sigh of relief. Whatever happened back on the station, she still felt like something had thrown her across a room into a brick wall. Sitting down was a welcome change.

Clara sat down next to her. "Well, you said you travelled with his ninth regeneration. And I'm pretty sure that was the first one after the war."

"You said, before, that you remember things from his timeline. Is that connected to what you said about him meeting you, sort of, earlier?"

She laughed. "Yeah. There's this planet, called Trenzalore, which is... well, it's where the Doctor dies."

Rose sat up and shifted over a bit so Clara could lean on the couch next to her. "His grave is there," the other woman continued. "Except it's not his grave, not really. It's his entire life, an entry point into his timeline wrapped up in a crack like a bolt of lightning. The Great Intelligence, which, apparently, used to be a disembodied snowman -"

Rose raised an eyebrow. "...don't ask," Clara muttered.

"Well, I met a big green alien stuffed into a human skin once, so I suppose nothing's all that strange when you put it in perspective."

Clara shook her head slowly. "It's a bit worrying how normal that sounds. Anyway, he kidnapped Vastra and Jenny and Strax to force the Doctor to go there -"

"Who?"

"Oh, I hope you get to meet them. They live in Victorian London. Jenny's human, but Vastra's a Silurian and Strax is a Sontaran. They solve crimes, I think, especially ones related to alien activity."

"I've heard of Sontarans, though it's hard to imagine one on our side. What's a Silurian?"

"Sentient humanoid lizard who evolved on Earth millions of years ago."

"...Ah."

"So, we went to Trenzalore, and the Great Intelligence tried to force the Doctor to open his tomb. Technically, River opened it, to save our lives. And the Great Intelligence went into the Doctor's timestream, and tried to destroy his life by reversing all his past victories. The universe was being destroyed, the stars were going out."

Rose shivered as she remembered saying those words, herself, a long time ago. _The stars are going out._

"I realized that the only way to save him was to follow the Great Intelligence into his timestream. And then it all made sense, what the Doctor had said about meeting me in the past. And I thought... I thought I was going to die, but I did it anyway. To save him, and to save everyone _he'd_ saved, everything he'd done."

This time, it was Rose who reached out for Clara's hand.

"It created echoes of me throughout his life," she continued. "And then he found me, he entered his own timestream in order to get me out. But while I was in there, I saw all his faces, all his regenerations. I don't remember much, but I often recall brief flashes or moments."

"So that's how you knew about the war, and the other console room, and his ninth regeneration."

Clara nodded.

"I was trying to save his life too. That's how I became Bad Wolf." Rose looked down, avoiding her gaze.

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to, you know."

"No, I should. Because despite what's happening now, I'd do it again in a heartbeat. And you told me about Trenzalore. You deserve to know."

She leaned back on the couch and started to explain. "You've met the Daleks, right?"

"I've heard about them. The Doctor says he first met one of my echoes at the Dalek Asylum. They're who the Time Lords fought in the war."

"An asylum full of Daleks sounds like the last place in the universe I'd ever want to be. They're evil, bred to believe completely in their own superiority, created to destroy. They were supposedly wiped out in the Time War, like the Time Lords, with only a few survivors, but the Dalek Emperor pulled his own ship out of time in order to hide away. He created a new race of Daleks by controlling Earth around two hundred thousand years from now. The Doctor came up with a plan to stop them, but he knew he would die in the process, so he tricked me into the Tardis and sent me back to my time."

Clara smiled. "But you went back for him."

"Course I did. I didn't know how, at first. Then I saw the words Bad Wolf, words that had been following us ever since I started travelling with him, and I realized that maybe they weren't a warning; they were a message instead. It told me I could save him. So I realized that the only way to get back was to open up the heart of the Tardis, to communicate telepathically with her. So I did, and I got the entire time vortex running through my head."

"And that’s how you sent the message to yourself in the first place. Bad Wolf."

"I was the Bad Wolf. I had the power to destroy the Daleks, so I did. I brought Jack Harkness back to life, too, which was inadvertently permanent. Maybe you'll meet him someday. Anyway, the energy from the Vortex would have killed me, so the Doctor took it out of my head and into his. He regenerated to save my life."

"You saved him, though. And Earth."

"We never expected that Bad Wolf would reassert itself, that anything like this would happen." Rose sighed. "I should go explain what I did at the station," she admitted reluctantly.

"I'll come help," Clara offered.

"No, it's alright, I should do this on my own. I haven't been alone with him since we got back - well, without the Tardis trying to explode around us, anyway - and we have some things to figure out. And I'll ask about River too." Rose stood up, her hand still linked with Clara's. "Thanks. For, well, everything."

Clara pulled her into a hug. "Good luck," she said, and Rose smiled. It was hard to be back here with the Doctor who wasn't really her Doctor anymore. She knew it was easy to resent the Doctor's other companions, and Rose had been worried that she'd get along with Clara about as well as the other woman got along with the Tardis, but she didn't know how she'd have gotten through the past day without her.


	6. Chapter 6

Judging by the Tardis's noises, they'd just landed somewhere. Earth, probably. Rose lingered by the door to the new console room as the Doctor scrambled around the time rotor, pulling levers and hitting buttons. He spun around and looked up, suddenly freezing as he saw her. She smiled nervously and hesitantly stepped into the room.

"We, ah, landed," he said. "On Earth. London. Just to check her systems."

"It was Bad Wolf, back at the station," she blurted out. "It stopped the Drakiril or whatever it was. I blacked out but Clara told me she saw that gold light, and now I can sort of remember."

The Doctor nodded. "I figured it was something like that. What triggered it?"

Rose laughed bitterly. "Oh, you know, being _about to die_ was probably a factor."

"Oh. Right."

Silence fell. Rose leaned against the railing, too late remembering the Tardis's reaction to her touch, but nothing happened. She realized that the time machine must have finished calibrating to the Bad Wolf energy - a necessity that was a bit confusing to begin with, since Bad Wolf originally came from the Tardis itself. The Doctor was busy looking at one of the monitors, but she could tell about half of it was only pretend work, to keep him distracted.

"We shouldn't be like this, you know," she said quietly. "We don't have to avoid each other. This morning was fine. Well, until the Tardis went haywire, anyway."

"This morning, we had an occupation, a problem to solve. What about when it's just us? What now, Rose?" He turned to face her and she was surprised to see the hurt on his face. "It may have only been a few years for you, but it was over three hundred for me."

_Three hundred?_

"I'm not looking to start up where we left off, you know," she said, her voice cold. _What am I doing?_ There was something about him, about this whole situation, and she couldn't help but hide behind the shields she'd put up over everything that had hurt her. "We made our choices, and I had _him."_

"And I have River," he said, matching her tone.

Silence. Rose's eyes widened, the shield falling a bit.

A look of disbelief came over the Doctor's face. "Oh, Rassilon. Rose, I'm sorry, I didn't mean - that wasn't -"

She stepped forward and fell into a hug, wrapping her arms around him. After a moment, he reciprocated. "I'm sorry," she said. "I don't know why I-"

"We never expected this. I thought you were gone forever, I thought you were happy-"

"I was happy, Doctor. And we said, yesterday, that we both moved on, and we were right." She pulled back from him and smiled.

"Back then, I never said it, but... Rose Tyler, I-"

She put a finger up to his lips. "You don't have to say it. He did."

He echoed her smile and they hugged again, her hands gripping his jacket as if she'd never let go. "Friends, right?" she said.

"Best friends."

"That really wasn't how I wanted you to find out about River," he added, and they both stepped back and leaned against the upper railing of the console.

"Who is she?"

"She's my... wife. And she's dead. Sort of. It's complicated. We never meet in the right order."

"Clara said she was at Trenzalore."

"It was a projection of her, and - wait, Clara told you about Trenzalore?"

"She said that your grave is there; she was explaining about the echoes-in-your-timeline thing, and why she knows stuff from your past."

"But she didn't tell you - yes, right, okay." He flipped another switch on the Tardis console, and suddenly the room was filled with the sound of a ringing phone.

"Oh no," he muttered. "Where'd she put the phone...?"

Rose raised an eyebrow. "I thought we didn't _have_ a phone."

"Two console rooms ago, it was right here, and then on the last one it was patched through to the front of the Tardis."

"Aw, but that's creepy, cause that one's not supposed to work. 'Are you my mummy,' remember?"

The Doctor laughed. "I think it's in here this time, if I could just figure out _where-"_

He pulled open a compartment on the side of the console. "Here we are!" He yanked the phone up to his ear before it could stop ringing. "Ah, Madame Vastra, hello!"

Vastra - that was one of the people Clara mentioned. "She's the Silurian?" Rose asked in a loud whisper, and the Doctor waved a hand at her to be quiet.

"You found _what?"_ The Doctor looked perplexed, an expression that slightly concerned Rose. "How do you know it's not just - oh, if there's temporal fluctuations, then - well, what about the vortex, have you detected - alright, alright, I'm on my way." He put the phone down and closed the compartment again.

Rose waited with anticipation, arms crossed, for an explanation.

"Go get Clara," he said. "There are time distortions in 1893!"

Rose smiled and bounced back toward the door to the Tardis interior. They were off to find adventures, just like always.

................

When they emerged from the Tardis, it was evening in Victorian London, judging by the view out the window next to the Tardis doors. Rose let the two of them go ahead of her, nervous to meet people who'd known this Doctor but never her own. She had been here first, but she felt like an imposter.

"Where are we?" Rose asked.

"Paternoster Row!" explained the Doctor, spinning around in a circle to take in their surroundings. "Though apparently we have not landed in the main foyer, which is what I was aiming for..."

The door in front of them was flung open to reveal a short alien who looked, Rose thought, a bit like a potato, honestly. A Sontaran - this was going to take some getting used to.

 _"Intruders will be -_ oh. It's you."

Rose couldn't help thinking that he looked a bit disappointed to see the Doctor rather than an enemy. "Strax, hello!" said the Doctor enthusiastically. "Sorry about the parking..." He and Clara headed for the door, and Rose followed. Then Strax noticed her.

 _"Halt!"_ he ordered. "Identify yourself, human scum!"

Rose blinked. "Uhhh..."

"That's Rose," Clara answered hurriedly. "It's alright, she's with us."

Strax grunted. "A pity. I just got new grenades I've been wanting to test."

The door swung open wider as someone a lot taller than the Sontaran leaned into the room. "Strax, go tell Jenny they're here," ordered the newcomer, and Rose's eyes widened. Vastra's skin was comprised of a pattern of green scales, which seemed a bit incongruous when combined with a typical Victorian-era dress. Her gaze swept over the three time travellers as Strax grumbled and left the room.

"Welcome, Doctor," she said. "Thank you for getting here on such short notice. We have a bit of a situation."

"Who is she?"

"She?" interrupted Rose, confused again.

Vastra looked at her intently, and Rose had a sinking feeling that the Silurian’s opinion of her would determine whether or not she’d be able to fit back into this life once again. "We tracked the temporal disruptions to their source, about half a mile away. We found a woman, unconscious, in the snow. We don’t know who she is, and I think she was sent back in time, but we don't know why."

The four of them set off down the hallway. "Jenny's running a few scans," Vastra continued. "She'll join us when she's done, and then I want you, Doctor, to look over the readings. This isn't like anything we've seen before."

The Doctor grinned. "If it was, it wouldn't be any fun, would it?"

Vastra sighed. They emerged into a kind of indoor courtyard, where large, decorative plants and ornate artifacts adorned the walls and floor. Rose imagined that during the day, the tall windows on the far wall would make the whole place glow with sunlight. Vastra shut a glass door behind them, and Rose, hesitant, waited until Clara and the Doctor sat down around the table in the center of the room before doing the same.

“How long has it been for you since Trenzalore?” Vastra asked the Doctor, joining them.

“Oh, not too long. Clara and I have been checking up on various important events, making sure the Great Intelligence wasn’t able to change anything permanently. And, of course, going wherever the Tardis happens to take us.”

“It’s good to see you all again,” Clara added, smiling. “Just, no conference calls this time, please.”

Rose, puzzled, turned toward the other companion. “They can talk, mentally, through time and space,” Clara explained. “But you have to be unconscious to do it, and she, ah -” she glanced nervously at the Silurian - “sort of tricked me into it. For a good reason,” she continued hurriedly.

Vastra smiled. “I don’t think Strax likes it much more than you do,” she replied. “And as for you, Rose, how did you end up on the Tardis?”

Rose had faced Daleks and Cybermen and all manner of aliens wanting to destroy the world, so she was a bit surprised at how nervous she was with Vastra’s gaze locked on her from across the table. “Actually, I’ve travelled with the Doctor before. It’s a bit… complicated,” she trailed off, as a woman with a simpler dress and long brown hair pulled back into a bun rounded the corner holding some sort of high-tech device.

“Jenny!” the Doctor exclaimed, jumping up to greet the newcomer and quickly getting distracted by the beeping, blinking indicator lights on the scanner. “Ooh, that’s a unique signature, that must be - but no, what if -”

“Strax is looking after her,” Jenny said to Vastra, leading to raised eyebrows from Clara, who didn’t seem to think this was a particularly good idea. “And the scanner finished. I’ll show the Doctor where we found her.” She smiled as she attempted to get him to disengage from the scanning device long enough to follow her outside.

“Thank you, dear!” Vastra called after her as the door shut behind them. Rose focused on the table in front of her once again, only to realize with a jolt of alarm that Clara had gone to check on Strax, leaving her alone with the Silurian.

“I believe that truth is clarity,” Vastra said quietly. “An important truth can be expressed in a single word, while lies are clouded and complicated. So, Rose - in one word, explain who you are to him.”

The air was still and silent. Rose took a deep breath, focusing on the moment, trying to find the right thought, the right word.

Then she felt like she had stopped breathing altogether when she found it. “Ghost,” she whispered.

“You left him, long ago. Why?”

“Love,” she admitted, feeling her face warm slightly.

“For him, or another?”

“Both.”

“And you never thought you would see him again.”

Rose thought for a moment. “Choice.”

“And now?”

“Lost,” she answered, quiet again.

“There’s something…” Vastra murmured. “Some sort of energy, something I noticed as soon as you arrived. Tell me, still in one word, why you are here now. And what you are afraid of.”

Rose could feel her own heartbeat as silence fell completely over the room before she answered.

“Wolf.”

The word echoed in her head, and for a frightening second, Rose thought she could feel the power growing inside her again, but it faded as soon as it began.

Vastra nodded slowly. “And the Doctor, do you trust him? Have you told him everything? And Clara?”

“Yes.”

“Then do you trust me?”

Rose hesitated before answering.

“Take your time,” Vastra said. “Be honest.”

“Yes,” she replied eventually, confident.

“Good. Then we can help.”

A crash sounded from down the hall and they both smiled as they heard Clara’s voice raised in exasperation. “Strax, what is that?” “That’s a vortisaur! Did I forget to mention that we have one now?”

“...I should probably deal with that.”

“Right behind you!”

Rose followed Vastra as she hurried down the hallway toward the source of the commotion, only to find Strax attempting to hold something that looked a bit like a flying alien dinosaur. “I named him Oswin!” Strax announced proudly.

Vastra raised an eyebrow. “There was a disturbance in the rift a few weeks ago and we couldn’t figure out how to return him, so I suppose, according to Strax, we have a pet now…”

The Silurian’s voice grew fainter as Rose approached the door at the end of the hallway, which had been left ajar just a crack. The woman they found with the time distortions must be in here, she realized. She pushed the door open, curious, and then froze in shock.

Lying on the bed, seemingly asleep, with a sonic device humming on the table next to her and other pieces of technology scattered around the room, was Donna Noble.


	7. Chapter 7

Clara squeaked and jumped out of the way as one of the vortisaur's wings swiped past her head. "You named him _Oswin?"_ she muttered. “Wasn’t that the name of one of my-”

“The middle name of the echo of you we first met, yes.” Vastra sighed. “Strax insisted.”

Clara glared at the creature, which almost appeared smug as it lay down in the back of the room. “What _is_ a vortisaur, anyway?”

“They live in the time vortex and feed on time energy. We’re hoping that you and the Doctor can take it with you when you leave.”

 _“You’re_ hoping,” Strax grumbled.

Clara backed away through the open door, keeping one eye on the vortisaur. “So who’d you find in this time distortion, anyway?” she asked Vastra.

Before Vastra could answer, Clara stumbled into Rose, who was standing frozen with the second door ajar.

“What is it?” she asked in unison with the Silurian.

Rose blinked and looked at her in shock. “That’s Donna Noble!”

“Who?”

“Clara, if she wakes up and sees aliens, she’ll remember and _she’ll die_ I have to tell the Doctor this can’t happen how did she even _get_ here-”

“Slow down, wait, why can’t she remember?”

Clara was vaguely aware of Vastra, in the background, ordering Strax to go fetch Jenny and the Doctor. Rose seemed to calm down slightly as Clara reached out to take both her hands. “When Donna helped create my - my Doctor,” Rose began, “it was a two-way Metacrisis. She got Time Lord knowledge in her head and she saved the universe, but it was going to kill her. He told me later what the original Doctor would have to do to save her - suppress her memories, all of them related to the Doctor or the Tardis or anything that could trigger it.”

“Alright,” Clara said, leading Rose slowly back down the hallway. “We’ll get the Doctor, and he’ll find a way to bring her back and keep her asleep, and she’ll get home and not know anything happened.”

“But why is she here in the first place?”

Clara looked at Vastra, but the Silurian seemed as puzzled as they were. “Was there truly no other choice?” Vastra asked. “Other than changing a part of her soul?”

Rose looked at the floor. “My Doctor told me that it was this or death. He couldn’t fix her, not really, no matter how much he would have wanted to.”

Clara watched the Silurian study Rose for a moment, before she replied, “Then perhaps fate has given us another chance.” Clara glanced back and forth between them, but before she could ask what Vastra meant, the front doors opened with a bang.

“Strax caught us halfway back, said it was urgent, but I knew that anyway because I _knew_ I recognized that energy signature from somewhere!” The Doctor grinned at Clara and the others, not picking up on their mood. “Guys, it’s _Bad Wolf!_ Rose, whatever you did back on the station, activating Bad Wolf must have triggered this as well…” He trailed off, as Rose’s eyes widened, panicked, and her grip on Clara’s hand tightened to the point of pain.

“What - ah, what’s…”

Clara spoke up hesitantly. “Rose told us - the woman who was sent back, she’s Donna Noble.”

The Doctor was silent for a moment, as shocked as Rose.

_“What?”_

“Is there a way to bring her back in the Tardis?” Clara asked. “You know, without her waking up or remembering?”

“There’s a chance that even _being_ in the Tardis could trigger the mental block,” he said quietly. “All the artron energy, and so on.”

“It’s my fault,” Rose whispered, barely loud enough for Clara to hear. “And if she dies, it’s my fault.”

Clara wrapped her arms around the taller woman. “No, it’s not. It’s Bad Wolf, not you.”

“There must be a reason this has occurred,” Vastra said. “This wasn’t random, this has meaning.”

The Doctor shook his head, and Clara could tell he was trying to stay calm for the sake of everyone else. “Maybe - maybe the Bad Wolf energy just reached out to anyone who had been connected to the Tardis, like it was.”

“So why now, though? Why back to Vastra and Jenny and Strax?” Clara asked.

The Doctor shrugged helplessly and sank down onto one of the chairs. “I tried to protect her; I tried everything.”

“What exactly is….?”

Vastra turned to Jenny, who’d been standing near the doorway. “Oh! Sorry, love.” They walked around the corner so Vastra could explain the events she’d missed. Strax muttered something about interruptions and explosions and stomped off down a different hallway, leaving the three Tardis residents in the main room.

Clara guided Rose to a couch against the back wall, and the blonde curled up beside her, refusing to look at anyone. The Doctor, of course, was staring resolutely at a potted plant. Not for the first time since Rose had shown up, Clara felt helpless, and she hated it. Everything was spiraling more and more out of control and she just wanted to be able to _do_ something, she wanted to help in some way, any way, but everything was just too big and broken and complicated for her to even know where to start. She looked down at the woman next to her, who had already been through so much and now blamed herself for yet another disaster. Rose looked hollow, withdrawn, empty, and Clara felt a surge of anger at the Doctor, who seemed unable to even try to fix whatever happened to Donna, or to comfort the girl with the Bad Wolf inside her.

Clara’s eyes widened. _Wait._ Vastra had said something about them having another chance, a way to right the past. And while that was about as far away from an answer as they could get, it was better than anything the Doctor had at this point. “I’ll be back in a minute,” she murmured, carefully maneuvering away from Rose, who barely registered the disruption. Around the corner, Clara found Vastra and Jenny, the former having just finished quietly explaining the situation to her wife.

“Vastra,” Clara said, “what you said before, about maybe this happening for a reason-”

The Silurian nodded. “I was going to ask the Doctor,” she began, glancing into the main room, “but given the circumstances, perhaps it is better that I speak to you first.”

Jenny nodded in agreement. “I’ll go check on Donna,” she said quietly.

“Thank you,” Vastra replied, their hands lingering in contact for a moment as Jenny walked away.

Turning back to Clara, the Silurian’s face grew more serious. “Now, first of all, you need to know that there is only a slim chance that this could even work, or that I’m right in my theory.”

Clara nodded. “Anything is better than what we have now.”

“Well, if Bad Wolf sent Donna back to where she’d be found, and to where the Doctor would consequently soon appear, along _with_ Bad Wolf, then perhaps Bad Wolf possesses the power to restore her memories.”

“So, you’re saying Rose can cure her,” said Clara. “And that’s why Bad Wolf sent her back, to force a need for a cure.”

“It’s unlikely at best, but I think it’s our only real option.”

Clara glanced at the glass doorway. “I’ll have to convince her to try,” she realized. “But I don’t know how. Vastra, she’s so scared.” Her voice wavered. “She thinks she’s dangerous.”

“I believe she’ll listen to you.”

Surprised, Clara looked back at her to see that the Silurian was almost smiling.

\------------------

“What? But, I can’t even control it enough to stop it from activating,” Rose objected. “How am I supposed to control it enough to cure her memories? How do I even _do_ that?”

All six of them sat around the table in the courtyard, even Strax, who had been instructed by Jenny to _not_ offer any advice. The Doctor seemed reenergized now that there was even a thought that they might be able to fix this.

“It could work,” he said. “The Bad Wolf energy could easily erase the mental blocks I’ve put up, but you’d have to get rid of all her Time Lord knowledge at the same time, or her mind will burn. The good news is, it’s already been compartmentalized by what I did. The bad news is, within that space in her mind, her memories of me and her Metacrisis aspects are intertwined.”

Rose shook her head slowly. “I could just end up making things worse. I could kill her.”

“There’s easily a chance she’ll die if we _don’t_ do anything,” Vastra interjected. “You’re our best hope.”

“If all else fails,” Clara added softly, “you’d just end up erasing her memories more permanently. That way we can bring her back in the Tardis or she could even wake up here, and it won’t hurt her.”

Jenny held out the scanning device. “It’s definitely the same energy trace,” she said. “There’s some of it here, from you. So if Bad Wolf brought Donna back here, well....”

Rose hesitated, then looked toward the Doctor. He took a deep breath.

“Rose, I always wished there was some way to change what I did to her,” he said quietly. “This might be our chance.”

Clara was surprised when Rose then turned to her, the same wordless question hanging in the air. “I know you’re scared,” she said after a moment. “But I trust you, even if you don’t trust yourself. And I didn’t know Donna, but… I think she’d trust you too.” Impulsively, she reached out for Rose’s hand, and the other woman held on as if she’d never let go.

“Alright,” Rose said, her voice faint but steady. “I’ll do it.”

Vastra stood, breaking the ensuing silence with the sharp scrape of her chair against the floor. “I believe it is best we do this sooner rather than later. Strax, please go retrieve the remaining monitoring equipment. I suggest that we keep the number of people in Donna’s room to a minimum; Rose, it’s up to you.”

Rose followed the Doctor to the end of the hallway as he practically jumped up from his seat and paced back and forth along the floor. “It’s alright,” she said. “the Doctor should be there, to show me what to do.” She glanced nervously back to the others. “And Clara.”

Clara smiled and inwardly breathed a sigh of relief. She wasn’t sure she could stand waiting outside. Vastra nodded slowly. “Good luck, Rose Tyler,” the Silurian replied.

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

Rose sat next to Donna, a bit unsettled by how quiet the atmosphere seemed. When Donna was awake, she could fill a whole room with her energy and sarcasm and, well, _loud_ -ness. Donna asleep just seemed _wrong_ , especially when Rose knew that waking up could be a death sentence.

The Doctor and Clara leaned against the wall, the Doctor having repeated pretty much every piece of advice he could think of three times already. Rose hoped that Clara could support him, too - her presence was already helping Rose think more clearly. She was still surprised that the Doctor's other companion had become so important to her so quickly, but she also couldn't imagine anything else. Clara was, for lack of a better word, _safe._

Rose took a deep breath and reached out a hand to Donna's forehead. She closed her eyes, and waited.

Her racing heart sped up the activation of Bad Wolf - for once, she was thankful for her inability to control that fear. The energy manifested as a warm glow in her own mind, and she visualized the light spreading down her arm into Donna's mind as well. Then Rose felt a surge of panic, and she couldn't keep her eyes closed, something was wrong, she couldn't see--

Her eyes were open, but she wasn't in Donna's room anymore. She was standing alone in a dark maze of hallways and tall, arched doors. Looking down, she jumped back involuntarily as she realized that her whole body was glowing.

Warily, Rose walked forward, reaching out as if to sense any response to her presence here - wherever here was. She gasped as words began to echo around her, beginning as virtually nonexistent wisps of sound and growing to be almost deafening.

"Hello?" she yelled over the noise. "Where are you?"

The voices stopped abruptly, replaced by a single message.

"Bad Wolf."

 _Donna?_ Rose turned slowly to look behind her.

"Rose Tyler, the Bad Wolf, I remember you."

Rose smiled in relief to see her friend only a few feet away, albeit slightly insubstantial - since she herself was glowing, she supposed that someone looking a bit like a ghost wasn't entirely a problem here.

"Donna!" she said. "I think I know what's happening here - you have to help me, you have to show me the right path."

"I... I forgot you, didn't I. I'm supposed to forget you. Where are we? I can't..."

"I think - well, I think we're in your mind, somehow. A representation of it." Rose slowly raised her hands in front of her, watching the lights dance around her palms. "The Bad Wolf energy can fix your memories, but I don't know where to go."

Donna's image was slowly growing more solid. She suddenly gasped in annoyance. "The Doctor! I told him not to do this but he never _listens,"_ she muttered, "he always thinks he knows what's best for everyone, he does. And Rose - wait, you shouldn't be here, I shouldn't _be_ here--"

"I can fix it! The Doctor said - he said that if I can separate your memories from your Metacrisis knowledge, I can let you remember again."

Donna crossed her arms. "Time Lords. Took him long enough to think of a solution. Anyway, he's put up barriers, I think. I can't get through."

"Please Donna, I need your help. I can get through the barriers, I just need to find them. Concentrate, _remember."_

The seconds ticked by as heartbeats, three, four, and Rose feared for a moment that they wouldn't be able to make it, that she couldn't control Bad Wolf, that this would all be for nothing, but then the walls around them shimmered and reconfigured into one long hallway. At the far end, white light fizzed and crackled in an unbroken lattice of energy.

"Now we're getting somewhere," Rose murmured.

Donna raised an eyebrow. "He never does anything small, does he? I would have made the barrier a bit more subtle, I think. A matrix of neuroscopic--"

She paused, raising a hand to the side of her head. "Of course, I won't know any of that anymore, will I? Not that I really knew it before, anyway. It's nice to remember one last time, though." She smiled sadly.

"I'm so sorry, Donna. And... you should know that I can't guarantee this can even work. It’s dangerous."

"I've been willing to risk this for a long time, without even knowing this would be what I was risking."

They both took a deep breath, joined hands, and stepped through the barrier.

Rose found herself confronted by floating points of light, some blue and some white. They swirled around her on all sides, blinking and fluctuating. She reached out with glowing hands and the Bad Wolf energy spiraled away from her, dancing through the light particles and merging with them. Her pulse sped up as she felt the energy drain away, pulling on what felt like her own life force, and she worried that she wouldn't be able to stop it before it took everything she had. She watched in disbelief as the white light seemed to absorb the Bad Wolf energy, change, disappear, and she knew instinctively that she had to hold it on course, not let it touch the blue, and to make sure the barrier still held, but it took so much effort --

With a jolt, she felt like she was falling, everything spinning around her, falling into nothingness. She tried to cry out but the words wouldn't form, she couldn't move, she couldn't keep her eyes open, and then everything was black.

One heartbeat. Two. Three.

Gradually, Rose became aware of _feeling_ again. The air was warm. Someone was holding on to her, and considering the fact that Rose seemed to be mostly horizontal, that was probably a good thing. She focused on blinking, and at first, the blurry pattern of light on the wall in front of her reminded her of the lights of the Tardis. As her vision swam back into focus, she looked up, and realized that Clara was leaning over her.

"Are you alright?" the brunette asked, clearly worried. "You just sort of _collapsed."_

"I think so..." Rose tried to raise herself up on her arms, clinging to Clara and attempting to look around the room. "How's Donna? Did it work?"

"We'll find out in a minute," the Doctor said, and she saw that he was standing above them, watching Donna nervously. Rose realized that she must have fallen onto the floor when Bad Wolf disconnected.

"How long was I...?"

"Only a few minutes," Clara replied. "You were, ah, glowing, kind of. And not moving."

Rose had managed to sit up by now, but Clara didn't let go and Rose was perfectly fine with that. She sighed and leaned closer, tired. "I hope it worked. I honestly have no idea. It was... confusing."

"Doctor?"

_Donna._

Rose held her breath as Clara pulled her to her feet, and they both peered anxiously at the red-haired woman who was currently looking a bit annoyed.

"That's got to be you, hasn't it, no one else is daft enough to wear those clothes."

The Doctor laughed and pulled Donna into a hug. "Donna Noble, you're back!"

Rose grinned and hugged Clara, who was smiling in relief. "Of course I'm back, Spaceman!" Donna laughed in reply and swung around to sit up. "Rose, is that you? I thought we left you in that other universe. Where am I? Wait - I..."

Donna trailed off and Rose leaned forward to hug her too. _I did it, I didn't screw up, I think it worked, I think it actually worked..._

"Donna, I'm so sorry," the Doctor said. "I'm so sorry about what I had to do, I had to save you and it was the only choice and I--"

“No, it wasn’t,” she said quietly, and everyone froze. “Look, Doctor, I’m glad to be back, I really, really am, and thank you for however you did it, but… I told you I couldn’t go back to that life, and you took it all away anyway.”

“I couldn’t just let you die!”

“That _was_ dying, changing who I was! It all worked out in the end, and that’s wonderful, but Doctor, just tell me one thing -- when you did it, did you know that you would be able to fix it one day?”

He sighed. “...No.”

Donna smiled sadly. “Well, there we have it, then. And thank you, honestly, for fixing me and everything, but I think you need someone to remind you that just because you’re a Time Lord doesn’t mean that you always know what’s best for everyone else.”

“I... I’m sorry,” he said, and this time it was Donna who pulled the Doctor into a hug.

“I know.”

“You’ll travel with us, right?” Rose asked.

“Oh, ‘course! Can’t let you all just fly away again, can I? I’ll have to explain everything to Shaun though - oh, that’ll be an interesting conversation.”

Rose smiled. “And you definitely don’t remember anything that was part of the Metacrisis knowledge, right?” she confirmed nervously.

“Nope, back to normal Donna, I suppose. ...How did you do it, Doctor?”

“Actually, uh, well… it was Rose.”

 _And here we go with the explanations,_ she thought. _Again._

Donna turned to her with a questioning look. “It’s Bad Wolf,” Rose began reluctantly. “It sort of… _came back,_ and it’s given me these abilities, but I can’t really control it. And we don’t know why it’s here. Or how.”

“Well, whatever you did, _thank you.”_

Rose smiled, and the Doctor glanced back at the door -- “Oh!”

“What?” Clara asked.

“I forgot - I should go tell the others what happened, I’ll be right back--”

He was out the door and down the hall in a moment.

“Now, who’s this?” Donna glanced past Rose and she suddenly remembered that Clara was leaning against the back wall.

“Oh! Uh, that’s Clara,” she said hurriedly as the other girl waved.

“I’d been travelling with the Doctor before we met Rose again,” she explained. “And we should probably mention that you’re in Victorian London right now.”

“I’m _where?_ Why?”

Rose, yet again, felt a pang of guilt twisting around inside. It had all worked out for the best, sure, but… “Honestly, um, that’s actually my fault too,” she said. “Bad Wolf sent you back here, and they think it was because it knew I’d be able to fix your memories, and it had to put us in a situation where we were forced to find a solution.”

“Who’s ‘they?’”

“The Doctor, Madame Vastra…”

“And me,” Clara added, reaching for Rose’s hand with a smile that she echoed. “And you did.”

Donna leaned over and stood up, reaching for the table beside her to get her balance. “So, who is--”

The Doctor bounded into the room again, this time with the Paternoster gang in tow. “Welcome,” Vastra began. “The Doctor tells me that the procedure worked?”

Donna stood frozen in surprise at the strange trio. “Uh, yep, memories fixed and everything,” she replied after a moment. “Wait - is he a Sontaran?” She narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms defensively. “Your army tried to poison the Earth once!”

“And someday I shall conquer this planet for the glory of the Sontaran empire!” Strax announced. “Would you like some tea?”

“No, not particularly!” Donna glanced at the Doctor and Rose tried not to laugh.

Vastra sighed and stepped forward. “Strax is working for me; he is on our side, I assure you.”

“And you are…?”

“Madame Vastra, investigator and friend of the Doctor. This is my wife, Jenny. We found you when you were transported back in time.”

“Oh. Uh, thank you. I’m Donna.”

Something on Jenny’s wrist beeped and she raised her arm to reveal a device that fit like a glove around her hand, parts blinking and humming. “Inspector Gregson is calling - we should get to Scotland Yard.”

Strax frowned. “I never get to bring my grenades there,” he grumbled.

The Doctor moved to put one arm on Donna’s shoulder and the other on Rose’s, but then he tried to include Clara too and gave up, heading for the hallway instead. “Alright, then! We’ll get back in the Tardis, and you three can carry on investigating things.”

“I am thankful that you were able to cure Donna,” Vastra said in a low murmur to Rose as they all started off toward the front room.

“Me too,” Rose replied quietly.

The Doctor tried a few doors before he found the small room that currently housed the Tardis. “You parked in _there?”_ Donna muttered.

As Rose was about to follow them, Vastra stopped her. “There is more of this approaching, Rose Tyler,” she said, once the others were out of earshot in the Tardis. “Bad Wolf is working based on some knowledge, some plan, that we do not yet understand.”

Rose tensed, feeling a cold draft that she wasn’t entirely sure was only from the front door.

“You will need to be strong,” the Silurian continued. “Learn to accept Bad Wolf, or it shall consume you.”

 

 


	9. Chapter 9

Clara absentmindedly swung back and forth slightly on the Tardis railing, leaning back to take in the view above her. The newly redecorated Tardis apparently had a skylight in the console room, though honestly, she felt that calling it a ‘skylight’ wasn’t really doing it justice. It turned out that hitting one of the levers caused the entire ceiling to open up with some sort of glowing forcefield; Clara knew that what she was seeing definitely _wasn’t_ Earth’s sky, and therefore not what was _actually_ outside, but either way, the cloud of hazy stars was gorgeous.

She vaguely registered the Doctor entering the room, smiling as he looked up at the ceiling.

“Are Donna and Rose back yet?” he asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” she said, her attention still on the starry view. “Donna said it might take a while to explain everything to Shaun.”

“Is Donna…?” he began hesitantly.

Clara smiled and finally turned her head to face him. “Yes, I think you’re okay. She’s angry, in a way, but… she’s also grateful.”

The Doctor sighed. “Sometimes, I think there aren’t any right answers.”

Clara shifted to her left and he leaned on the railing next to her.

“You do what you can, Doctor,” she said quietly. “Sometimes it might feel like it isn’t enough, but you did save her in the end, even if it took a couple years. You’ve saved hundreds of worlds. And even if it’s not every person, even if sometimes there isn’t a right answer, it still matters.”

“With Rose, too, yeah?” he asked, more for her benefit than his own, she suspected.

“Yeah.”

The Doctor smiled slightly and they spent the next few minutes staring up at the stardust.

“You run away,” Clara said eventually, and the Doctor turned toward her with a start. “You forget, that’s what you do with things that hurt you, and now they’ve come back and you can’t forget anymore.”

“After two thousand years--” he began, his voice dark.

“And I know it’s easier that way. But even if you shut out the past it’s never going to stop chasing you across time and space.”

“Think of the one thing you regret the most, Clara,” he said quietly. “Think of the one thing you can never fix but would do anything to change, and then imagine it was a hundred, a thousand times worse. You could never, never forget it, so you cover it up with anything you possibly can, you forget everything you can, until maybe it feels like you’re far enough away from what you’ve done that you can pretend it’s buried and hidden away.”

She wrapped her arms around him, her face against the warmth of his jacket, and for a moment it was like the others had never come back, like they were still just exploring the universe and going wherever the Tardis decided to take them. Then she opened her eyes and saw the glimmering lights of the new console room, and realized that something fundamental had changed with the arrival of Bad Wolf.

“Do you know yet, Doctor?” she asked. “About why Rose is back, or why all of this is happening?”

She didn’t really expect an honest answer, and was unsurprised at his reply – “No, not yet.”

“Alright, then,” she said softly, as the front door of the Tardis suddenly creaked open.

Assuming Donna was returning, Clara was surprised to see instead an old man, with white hair and a knitted red hat. He blinked and looked around, as if he was surprised by the light. “Doctor?” he asked, focusing on the two of them standing against the railing. “Is that you?”

The Doctor grinned. “Wilfred!”

Clara stepped back with a smile as the old man slowly approached the Doctor.

“I knew you were regenerating last time,” he said, “but I didn’t know what to expect!”

“Donna told you what happened?”

Wilfred smiled. “Yeah, me and Silvia. Good to see Rose again, too.”

Clara subtly stepped towards the Tardis doors, intending to explore for a bit before the others got back, but was stopped by an exclamation of “Hello! I’m Donna’s grandfather; you can call me Wilf. You must be Clara!”

She laughed. “Yep!” she answered as she reached the doors. “I’m just going to go look around before they get back; you probably have a lot of catching up to do. Nice to meet you!”

He grinned and waved in response, and as the doors shut behind her she could hear him start to say to the Doctor, “Seriously, thank you, Doctor, I can’t believe Donna’s back to --”

The Tardis closed off the rest of his words and Clara was left looking around the typical suburban street they’d landed in. It must have been so strange for Donna coming back here now, remembering _not_ remembering. Clara couldn’t imagine losing everything she’d gained from travelling with the Doctor; no wonder Donna had been so angry at him. Any kind of normal life seemed… small, in comparison to the universe. Anything would.

She started to walk down the road but almost immediately saw a flash of gold out of the corner of her eye - she spun to her left to find Rose, hair blowing back and forth in the breeze as she wandered back to the Tardis.

“Hi!”

Rose smiled and jogged the last few steps to catch up. “Hey.”

“Where’s Donna?”

“Talking to Shaun still, I think. They have a lot to figure out.”

Clara winced. “I can imagine.” It was one thing to tell her family who knew, the people who had seen her memory loss and were overjoyed to have her back. It was another entirely to tell a husband who had never known her the way she used to be.

They walked slowly down the road away from the Tardis. “Is the Doctor okay?” Rose asked.

“Yeah. Well, as okay as he ever is, I think.”

“Donna’s not _really_ all that mad at him - honestly, mostly she’s just really happy to have her memories back. But still…”

“...It still happened.”

“Yeah.”

“I was thinking - what would I have done in her place? What would you have done?”

Rose laughed sharply. “Before the Doctor, I was _nothing_ , Clara. I wouldn’t go back to that for anything.”

“What about after the Doctor?” she asked quietly.

“I’ve still got the universe, don’t I?”

Clara smiled. “Yeah.”

“And you.”

Clara could have sworn that the following half-second of silence was far longer in actuality, and nope, she was _not_ blushing, that was _not_ happening, _no._

A very loud, very noticeable voice called out from down the road. “Oi! Any idea where we’re going next?”

Clara and Rose waved at Donna as she approached, smiling as they realized that she was smiling too. “So everything with Shaun went…?”

“Fine! It took him a while to absorb all the details, poor thing, but he’d always been the type to believe in aliens and that sort. Bit ironic that I was the one who thought it was all rubbish.” Donna kept talking as the three of them returned to the Tardis. “He’s a bit worried about me going off with all of you, but I think he’s okay with it. I asked him if he wanted to come along, and honestly if he’d said yes the Doctor just would’ve had to deal with it, but he thinks it’d be too much for him. Honestly, he’s probably right.”

Rose laughed. “You should’ve seen Mickey the first time I left with the Doctor.”

Clara, having finally thought she was getting the hang of who was who in this growing mix of past companions, was lost once again. She sighed. “Wait, who?”

Wilf opened the Tardis doors just as they reached them, and Clara and Rose went on ahead to let Donna say goodbye to her grandfather. Clara smiled - things were going well for once, and the feeling of helplessness that had spread during the whole will-we-save-Donna situation had dissipated. She looked up at the starlit ceiling and suddenly realized that Rose hadn’t seen it yet. Quietly, the Doctor still lingering near the Tardis doors with the Noble family, Clara tapped Rose’s shoulder and pointed wordlessly up at the ghostly sky.

The taller woman let out an audible gasp and blindly reached out a hand for Clara as she gazed up at the spectacle. If anything, the Tardis had intensified the colors that swirled calmly through the stardust, and Rose pulled Clara up the spiral staircase until they were standing directly under all the lights.

“It’s _amazing,”_ she breathed. “I didn’t know the Tardis could _do_ that! We’re still on Earth, right?”

“I think so,” Clara answered, her gaze pulled to watch the awestruck woman beside her rather than the sky above. “I was investigating the console - probably shouldn't have been, don’t tell the Doctor - and there’s a lever that opens up the ceiling.”

They heard the click of the doors below and both of them turned back to face the returning Doctor and Donna, Rose starting to ask “So where are we --”

And then everything went to hell.

Rose stopped and gasped mid-sentence, her eyes widening in shock and then snapping closed as the room filled with a vivid light that exploded outward from the blonde woman. Someone cried out - Clara realized belatedly that it was probably her - as the light dwindled into a stream of golden dust that danced around the console, the time rotor itself beginning to whirr up and down. As the light faded enough for everyone to regain their bearings, Clara saw with a spike of worry that Rose was collapsed on the floor of the platform.

“Rose?” the Doctor shouted, running clumsily up the spiral stairs.

Clara knelt next to her as she faded back into consciousness, something that she was beginning to realize was a far too common occurrence.

“Did I…?”

“Bad Wolf.” Clara replied apologetically. “I think it’s sending us somewhere.”

“...What just _happened?”_ came the frantic question from the ginger waiting on the main floor.

“Sorry!” Rose called down as she scrambled to her feet. “I think, I, uh…”

“Bad Wolf,” Clara finished.

The Doctor swirled around the console, flicking levers and pressing buttons on various screens and displays.

Clara tried to peer over his shoulder without any luck, one of Rose’s arms still entwined with hers. “Where are we going?”

He looked up nervously. “We seem to be, ah… there’s a possibility that… well, I think… I don’t, um, know.”

With a sharp thud and the Tardis’s whining noise (which, honestly, felt a bit more sinister when it wasn’t planned), they materialized. Everyone cautiously moved to the doorway, Donna waiting near the exit as the rest of them moved down from the platform, the Doctor casting one last glance back to the nonfunctional screens.

“Shouldn’t we at least be able to, you know, see where we are?” Rose asked as they stood cautiously at the doors. “Even if we couldn’t know where we were going?”

“I think there was a temporary energy overload. Should be fine, in the long run, the Tardis is calibrated now, but, ah, well… monitor’s not working at the moment.”

“...Oh.”

Clara realized that all three of them were staring apprehensively at the doors, even the Doctor, and she reluctantly took a deep breath and simply pushed the doors open, striding a few paces ahead into who-knows-what.

“Well, that’s a bit anti-climactic.”

Clara had stepped into a room that, for lack of a better word, was… grey. The walls were grey, the floor was grey, even the arching ceiling was texturally as dull as the environment around it. As the others followed her out, she stepped out into the middle of the unimpressive square room they’d landed in, corridors branching off in three directions.

“What do you think?” Rose asked. “Building, space station, starship?”

“Could be anything,” the Doctor muttered. He and Rose simultaneously pulled out their sonic screwdrivers and began scanning the room, stopped after a second and looking at each other in confusion.

Clara laughed. “Hey!” said Donna. “Oooh, how’d you get that? I want one! I thought he was always so _protective_ of them…”

Everyone stopped and turned to the right in unison as an answering hum echoed from the corridor.

“Uhhhhh…” Clara said as the Doctor approached the passageway. “Maybe we should _not_ go toward the scary noise?”

“I’m with Clara!” Donna seconded immediately.

The Doctor looked around the room. “Three corridors, right?” he said. “We should split up - I’ll go investigate whatever _that_ was, and the three of you split yourselves up between the other two.”

Rose shook her head stubbornly. “I want to know what that was,” she said. “I’m coming with you.”

Donna shrugged. “One per passage then?” she asked Clara, who shrugged in response.

This couldn’t _possibly_ end in disaster, she thought cynically as she stepped into one of the dark corridors, alone, while both sonic-screwdriver-wielding members of their group walked in the opposite direction. Yep, this was a _great_ idea.

As the passage moved further into, well, whatever this was, Clara couldn’t see anything different. The same dull, utilitarian environment, same arched ceiling, same unremitting grey light. No more noises, though.

_Crash._

Scratch that.

Loud clanging was followed by what could only be described as weapons fire, a short string of blasts that echoed down the hallway and sent Clara running ahead as the corridor curved back toward the middle. She almost called out for the others, but realized that doing so would only alert whoever was causing the weapons fire.

She skidded to a halt as the corridor opened into a small alcove, a dead end, even smaller than the room they’d materialized into. As soon as she saw what was _in_ the room, she felt like she couldn’t breathe.

Three small nooks lined the back wall, each with twisting wires and connections that plugged into something Clara had hoped to never see again, something gleaming silver and blue and frankly _terrifying_. She stumbled backwards as they began to wake up, activating from hibernation either to join the ongoing supposed battle or because they had sensed her presence. She tripped over a stray wire and crashed to the floor as one the Cybermen raised its arm. _“DELETE.”_

Clara scrambled to her feet as she found her voice. “Doctor!” she screamed down the hallway. “They’re Cybermen!”

All three were fully active now, blue lights clear and steady as they clanked purposefully across the floor. Clara turned to sprint back the way she had come, and almost crashed into a woman with dark skin and hair who held a fairly frightening weapon pointed at the metal monsters.

“Get back!” she shouted, and Clara complied, flinching away from the spray of debris as the gun fired with a shriek of energy. As the smoke cleared, she saw her rescuer shaking the weapon slightly and frowning at the results as the last lights on its handle flickered and died. “Charge is gone,” she muttered.

“Who…?”

She raced down the hallway, pulling Clara along with her. “You’re from one of the captured transports, right?” she said quickly. “I’d thought we’d gotten everyone out of here already. It’s alright, we just need to get out of the interference network on this side of the ship and then we can use the vortex manipulator. What’s your name?”

“Uh… Clara.”

“Sorry for the rush, there’s a charge set to go off in three minutes. Nice to meet you - I think. I’m Martha Jones.”

 

 


	10. Chapter 10

“Wait, what do you mean, this whole place is going to explode?”

“Well, _yes_ , that’s really the only way to get rid of the Cybermen!”

Clara felt a surge of panic as she realized that she didn’t know how to get back to the Tardis. “So,” Martha was saying, “the faster we get out of --”

“No!” she interrupted. “No, I can’t, I have my own way out, but I need to find my friends, I need to warn the Doctor and get back to the Tardis --”

She stopped as she realized that Martha was staring at her in shock, eyes wide, standing frozen in the middle of the room.

“You’re with the Doctor?”

“You know the Doctor?”

A clang resonated throughout the room as a Cyberman appeared in a corridor doorway. It raised an arm and a glow began to build up. _“DELETE.”_

“Run!”

They sprinted down an opposite hallway as bursts of energy blasted against the walls behind them.

“Where’s the Tardis?”

“I don’t know!”

“You don’t _know?”_

“These hallways all look the same!”

A voice rang out from their left. “Clara! Donna!”

“Rose?” Clara yelled in response, and got the Doctor’s reply.

“There are Cybermen here, we need to go!”

“Yeah, you think?” came Donna’s reply, from what sounded like Clara’s left, and she laughed despite herself.

Within a few seconds, they all converged in a room that, thankfully, was the same one they’d materialized in.  

“I don’t know what was here that Bad Wolf -- _Martha?”_ The Doctor stared in disbelief.

“Ten seconds, everyone, come on, into the Tardis!” said a man who’d come running in along with Donna. Clara didn’t hesitate to obey, though the Doctor’s objection of “Wait, ten seconds till _what?”_ was quickly silenced as Martha grabbed him by the arm and dragged him through the doors of his spaceship.

They all piled into the console room as the doors shut behind them and the customary whirring sound signified their departure. The counter on Martha’s wrist clicked to zero in the ensuing silence.

“Um,” Martha said eventually. “If someone could explain what just happened…”

“...My fault,” Rose said. “Long story. Hi, Martha, Mickey.”

“What are you two doing here?” the Doctor broke in, a bit put out. “How’d you even get all the way out here?”

“Vortex manipulators,” Mickey answered. “We travel around and, well, find alien stuff and deal with it.”

“Partners in alien investigation,” Martha said, grinning, holding up her hand to show off a simple, shining band of gold on her finger.

Rose gasped. “You two got married? That’s brilliant!” She smiled and hugged Martha, who happened to be closest.

Mickey looked up at the new Tardis console. “What happened in here?” he asked, amazed. “This is a lot better than the old one.”

“I didn’t even know the Tardis could change,” Martha added.

“Well, if the Doctor can,” Donna replied, laughing.

“Yeah, what’s with the bowtie?”

“He says they’re cool,” Clara explained. “Oh, I’m Clara, by the way,” she added, ignoring the Doctor’s interruption of “Oi! They _are!”_

Mickey waved.

“I’m glad I found you in time,” Martha said. “We were sure we’d gotten everyone out before we set the charges; we had no idea that we’d run into all of you.”

The Doctor, by now, had made it up the staircase to check the possibly-broken monitors. “Sure, _now_ they work,” he grumbled. “It looks like the Cyberman ship’s been destroyed,” he called down to everyone. “What happened back there?”

“They had captured a few colony transports,” Mickey explained. “We were in the same timezone cause we were tracking down a rogue Time Agent. We went in to transport all the colonists out, to a nearby system.”

“It wasn’t too big of a ship,” Martha added, “So the vortex manipulators were enough to get people out one at a time.”

“I thought you were working for Unit, last I knew,” Donna said.

“Well, after everything with the Osterhagen Key, I realized that there were probably better ways to help than staying with them. Mickey came to work with us after he chose to stay on this side of the Void, and when I got to know him I realized he felt the same way about it, so we split off from Unit and started this.”

“You should come see the Tardis!” Rose exclaimed, heading for the spiral stairway to join the Doctor. “The new layout's amazing!”

“Sure!” Mickey answered, and Martha and Donna tagged along behind him, Donna muttering something about getting lost.

Clara lingered at the base of the stairs. Their arrival hadn’t exactly been necessary to stop the Cybermen; honestly, they had almost made things _worse._ So, Bad Wolf must have sent them there _because_ of Martha and Mickey. First Donna, now this.

The Doctor was still waiting by the console when she got upstairs. “I’m going to make sure everything’s actually working,” he said. “Go make sure they don’t get lost, won’t you?”

Clara laughed and headed for the far door. “I think Rose is a lot less likely to get lost than I am.”

…………….

She caught up with everyone in a large circular room, with a circle of very comfortable-looking chairs and couches in the middle and another skylight overhead. The same white-and-gold coloring, which was beginning to seem familiar or even inviting, made the whole place gleam.

Collapsing into a chair next to Rose, she caught the tail end of Donna’s memory explanation to the two newcomers.

“-- and then I woke up in Victorian London, of all places, and remembered _not remembering,_ which is the weirdest feeling, seriously. Rose’s the one who fixed it - uh, basically, Bad Wolf. You should probably explain that part.”

“Oh. Right,” Rose began, the other two watching her intently, Martha’s eyes still a bit wide with shock about what happened to Donna. “So, after you left, the Doctor brought the rest of us to the parallel universe. We had to do something about - about the Metacrisis, because he was the Doctor, but he’d just destroyed all the Daleks, _again,_ and he needed someone. And, well, I stayed with him.”

“So where and why --”

_“Shhhhh!”_

Rose almost laughed. “Anyway,” she continued, “backtracking a bit - back when he regenerated into the Doctor we knew, it was all connected to something I did. Long story, but basically I had to absorb the Time Vortex and it turned me into this entity called Bad Wolf. The Doctor cured me after, we thought, but then once I was in the parallel universe again with the other Doctor, it started to come back. And I barely have any control over what it does, consciously. I can sort of guide it, but…”

“We didn’t plan to go to that Cyberman ship,” Donna said. “Rose kind of… Bad-Wolfed everything, and the Tardis took us there on its own.”

“So, you’re saying Bad Wolf was looking for us?” Martha asked.

“Probably,” said Clara.

Martha looked like she had more questions, but --

“So how’d you meet the Doctor, anyway?” said Donna, and Clara could sense Rose relaxing slightly beside her.

“The wifi wasn’t working,” Clara started to explain. “And a woman in a shop gave me the Doctor’s phone number - never did find out who she was. Ended up saving the world from aliens trying to upload peoples’ minds to the internet. You?”

Martha smiled. “The hospital I was studying at got transported to the moon, along with him, of course.”

“Got beamed to the Tardis on my wedding day,” said Donna. “Turned out I was contaminated with huon particles and was going to get sacrificed to a giant spider. Oh, and my fiance was working with the spider.”

_“What?”_

Martha winced. “That’s painful, sorry.”

“Oh, it all worked out in the end. Plus I wouldn’t have met the Doctor if it hadn’t happened. And the fiance ended up getting sacrificed, which I was pretty happy about after everything, honestly.”

Clara laughed and turned to Mickey. “I mean, you probably can’t beat that, but…?”

“Oh, I only met him cause of Rose.”

Clara raised an eyebrow.

“We were dating at the time,” the blonde explained. “It, well, it didn’t last very long after that.”

She glanced back and forth between Rose and Mickey, processing. _“Ohhh._ Okay. ...I think stuff people said before makes more sense now.”

Everyone laughed.

“How long are you two going to stay with us?” Donna asked.

“Maybe one trip,” Mickey said, smiling. “We were planning to stay with Martha’s family for a while when we got back to Earth.”

“Yeah - too long with the Doctor isn’t always the best idea. But it’s good to see you all - we thought he was gone for good this time,” Martha added. “So, Rose, how did you get back here? And where’s the other Doctor?”

It was as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. Clara’s heart hurt for the woman sitting next to her; she knew Rose would have to explain this eventually, but that didn’t make it any easier.

“Bad Wolf sent me back. I don’t know why. And… he’s dead.”

Stunned silence.

“...I’m so sorry, Rose,” Martha said quietly.

The blonde stood up and before Clara could do anything, she was headed for the door. “I’m going to go see if the Doctor needs any help,” she said tonelessly, and then she was gone.

Clara tensed on the edge of her chair. “Maybe I should…”

“Let her go,” Mickey advised. “She probably needs to be alone. ...I can’t believe he’s _dead.”_

Martha nodded slowly and leaned on his shoulder. Donna, meanwhile, had frozen. “I didn’t even think to ask,” she whispered. “I just assumed he was still over there…”

Clara felt a surge of guilt that she hadn’t considered Donna’s connection to the Metacrisis Doctor. Well, it had been Rose’s news to tell, not hers, but maybe she should have prepared Donna for it somehow. Clara sighed. Everything was still all… broken.

“Do you know how it happened?” Martha asked.

Clara shook her head. “She hasn’t told me. Or the Doctor, so don’t bother asking him. ...Maybe we should go find your rooms,” she suggested quietly, “since it looks like we’ll all be in the Tardis ‘overnight’ at this point.”

“Yeah.” Donna stood up. “That’s a good idea.”

_ To take our minds off it, anyway.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just so you guys know, I don't have a lot left to write, but since i've had very little /time/ to write lately i'm considering switching to posting once a week, just to ensure that i don't run out of chapters to post before i finish this thing so I won't have to go on any kind of hiatus. Depending on how this week goes, i'll let you know next Monday whether i'm switching my update schedule or not. Thanks! :)
> 
> Also, i'm continuing to update the character tag list, generally the chapter after anyone new shows up, to avoid spoilers for people keeping up with the fic.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, soooooo basically i've been really looking forward to posting this chapter because feels. 
> 
> Also, as said previously, i might be switching to monday-only updates soon, just to completely ensure that i won't have to ever go on hiatus if my posting catches up to my writing. i'm almost done, i've just had less time to write than previously expected cause school's a bit insane.

A scream rang out in the middle of the night, jolting Clara awake. At first she thought the echoing sound had come from a dream, but a second, clearly in the waking world, sent her scrambling out of bed and out the door of her room. The scream was cut off, but Clara could tell there was only one possible source, and she pulled open the door across the hall.

Her pulse racing, she peered into the still darkness of Rose’s room. She could just see a faint silhouette sitting up on the bed, curled in on herself.

“Rose?” she whispered, and slowly crossed the floor.

Movement.

The other woman turned to look at her, her breathing unsteady. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “Did I wake you up?”

“It’s alright, really.” Clara sat down next to her and started to reach out a hand, but Rose shied away. “What happened?”

“They’re just dreams. I’m fine.”

“Rose, you’re shaking. You’re not fine.”

There was a muffled sound like a gasp, and Rose pulled a hand up to wipe at her face. Clara reached out before she could stop her and turned the other girl’s face toward her, her hand along Rose’s jawline.

A sharp intake of breath from both of them, and Clara saw the smudged tears as her eyes adjusted to the dimness. “Please,” she said quietly, willing Rose to trust her, _just let me in, please let me in --_

Rose collapsed toward her, burying her face in her shoulder and clinging to the back of her shirt. “I’m sorry,” she got out, between the tears.

Clara held her as close as she could. “I know it’s not okay, I know it’s not, but it will be, I promise.”

They stayed in the darkness for a while, Rose’s breathing slowly evening out, silence drifting around them like fog. Clara breathed in the scent of her hair, her perfume, something comforting and warm. She wanted to do something, anything, to help her, but she didn’t know how. There wasn’t any enemy to face, darkness to confront, sacrifice to make. Just a faceless, frightening mystery and the ghosts of a past all tangled into shards of broken time.

But they were in it together now. Always.

Rose sighed and loosened her grip slightly. “I’m sorry,” she whispered again. “I keep having nightmares about it.”

“About him?”

“Yeah. I saw it happen.”

Clara hesitantly pulled back far enough to look her in the eye. “Rose, you can tell me, if you want. You don’t have to, but if it helps, I’m here.”

The blonde smiled slightly. “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” she said absently, and Clara felt an ache in her heart at the broken honesty. All Rose’s walls were gone; all the barriers she’d put up to keep everyone out had fallen away because she didn’t have the strength to keep them alive.

Rose took a deep breath. “We went to this planet, Eridia . It was supposed to be a routine trip, just something fun, somewhere to go and explore. It wasn’t that populated; there were a few colonies, only. We got there and everything was… off, somehow. Everyone was subdued, scared. Scared of the dark.”

Clara could tell it was getting harder for her to speak as she went on, but Rose kept going.

“The Doctor figured it out eventually, why there were people going missing in the darkness. The planet had an infestation of Vashta Nerada - they’re these awful creatures, things that are part of the shadows and hunt in your darkest places, and they can kill a person in nothing more than a moment. He’d faced them before, in his original self - when he was travelling with Donna, I think.”

Rose paused and leaned against Clara so her face was turned away.

“He confronted them, let them speak. It had worked before. He told them that if they let us evacuate all the colonists, they could have the whole planet to themselves. ...They didn’t listen. He was always so confident, so sure of himself, acted the same way he always had. But he didn’t think things through. He never did. He couldn’t imagine that they would just _not listen._ And they killed him,” she said, silent tears starting up again. “They just killed him, right there out in the open. And I could just watch, because it happened in a second, in a flash. I think… I think Bad Wolf activated after that, destroyed them all. I ran back to the Tardis, but I don’t really remember. After that, we just sort of… waited, in space, in nothing, until the Tardis brought me to Bad Wolf Bay. It was a long time later. I couldn’t tell you how long.”

Clara pulled her closer and let one hand run through her hair. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “For everything.”

“And we’ll find out what Bad Wolf is doing, I promise. I can’t fix this, but, well, I can try.”

Rose smiled against her shoulder. “We’ll face it together.”

“Yeah.”

“...I don’t think I can really sleep again.”

Clara stood up and guided Rose with her. “Why don’t we go back to the console room? We can open the skylight.”

“Yeah, that’d be nice.”

The other woman mostly disentangled herself from Clara and twined their fingers together as they stepped into the hallway. The walk down the corridor was silent, but peaceful. The others were probably asleep. Clara had no idea what time it was, relative or otherwise, but even the Doctor was no where to be found, even in the main room. The time rotor whirred steadily, quietly, meaning they were probably just drifting somewhere in space. The shining white and gold were muted, the only light coming from the glowing time rotor itself and its reflections on the walls.

Rose paused in the center of the platform. “You know,” she said, “I think there’s something that might be better than the skylight.” She padded down the spiral staircase and crossed to the doors, which she cautiously opened, Clara still waiting above, arms crossed over the railing.

Clara gasped as she saw the drifting cosmic landscape, and hurried down the stairs to join Rose at the doorway. They both gazed outside in wonder. The Tardis was floating outside a nebula, a newborn star glowing white off to their left and clouds of multicolored haze swirling across the black sky. Stars and galaxies twinkled in the distance, sprinkling the whole view with brilliant stardust.

“Yeah,” Clara said breathlessly. “Better than the skylight.” She reached out a hand into the void.

“He must have just left us drifting,” said Rose. “I hoped so. The Tardis always makes an air pocket around itself; you could sit here for ages and be perfectly safe.”

“This is beautiful. I never thought to do this before.”

“Actually…” Rose smiled. “Here, keep hold of my hand.” She leaned forward. “The Doctor did this once - go on, step forward.”

Clara glanced back at her and hesitantly stepped out of the doorway.

She stared in wonder around her, speechless. She was floating in space, no world to fall away under her feet, Rose’s hand her tether to solid ground. She felt like she was dancing amongst solar fire, breathing in stardust, galaxies in her blood. Her hair drifted up in a halo, and she could hear the comforting hum of the Tardis behind her.

“Amazing, isn’t it?”

Clara could only nod in agreement. Taking one last look around her, she tugged on Rose’s hand and was pulled back into the Tardis’s gravity. She squeaked involuntarily as she lost her balance and tipped forward, crashing into Rose and sending them both collapsing, laughing, onto the floor.

And suddenly she was sprawled on top of Rose, her arms out against the ground to hold herself up, and the other woman was blinking up at her with the most endearing smile, and Clara froze and scrambled off to the side as fast as she could.

“Thanks,” she said softly, trying to get her mind back to some sense of normalcy, “for the space...floaty...thing.”

She was sitting on the edge of the Tardis now, her legs dangling out into space, and Rose joined her, swinging her legs out too. The blonde woman laughed quietly. “When I did that, I couldn’t believe anything could be that beautiful. We all travel out here, but we’re never really part of it, not like that.”

Clara glanced over and saw her looking up into the stars with a smile that tugged at her heart. She shifted closer and Rose leaned her head on her shoulder. “Tell me,” Clara murmured. “Tell me about everywhere you went, everything you saw. Tell me his stories.”

They sat there for what could have been hours, as Rose wove her words into adventures of joy and excitement and fear, and poured her heart out into spoken melodies of stardust. And somehow, when Clara looked at her, she realized something that scared her more than any monster or shadow.

She was in love with Rose Tyler.

 

 


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am officially switching to Monday-only updates!!! This is so I can 100% guarantee i won't ever catch up posting to where i am with my writing; school's taking up a looooot of time lately. I don't want to ever have to go on some sort of irregular indefinite hiatus update schedule or anything, at least not until Part 1 is finished. And this way I won't, so we're all good.
> 
> also i think this is the longest chapter so far? Sorry the lengths have started to vary a bit; there's been a lot of plot twists and character introductions recently so chapters just sort of end wherever they need to end based on that stuff.

The next morning, they all gathered in what Rose was beginning to think of as the conference room, that place with the comfortable chairs and second skylight. This time, she inspected it more carefully, noticing the bookshelves lining octahedral walls and the metallic echoes of the ‘round things’ of the console room. She was curled up on one side of the couch, across from Clara, who had basically claimed one of the armchairs as her own. The Doctor paced back and forth in the center of the circle as Donna stumbled in.

“I’m not exactly a morning person, Doctor,” she muttered.

“Well, it’s not technically morning…”

“Does ‘five hours of sleep’ mean anything to you? Why are we here, anyway?”

She took a chair to Rose’s left. Martha, by contrast, entered seemingly wide-awake, dragging Mickey along behind her. “I’m assuming this is about the situation with Bad Wolf?” she said.

The Doctor nodded. “We need to figure out what Bad Wolf is trying to do,” he explained, jumping on the small coffee table in the center. “Also, this was Clara’s idea.”

Clara shrugged. “I thought it might help to pool our ideas, figure out where we might need to go next.”

Rose smiled. “Also, Doctor, you’re going to break that,” she said, and he stepped down from the table rather hurriedly as it creaked.

“Alright then,” Mickey said. “So, let’s start with what’s happened so far. Bad Wolf brought you to us, right?”

“And cured Donna,” added Martha.

“And sent Donna back in the first place,” Rose said, ignoring the pang of guilt.

“Also saved me on a space station, and, well, saved the whole space station.” Clara glanced at Rose with a smile.

“And helped Rose cross universes to begin with,” said the Doctor, “and sent a message to the psychic paper.”

“Soooo…” said Martha, “it’s looking for people like us and Donna. People who travelled with you? People who knew Rose?”

“We can’t really know if it’s both or either unless we run into someone I don’t know,” Rose replied.

“And you cured Donna,” the Doctor added, “which means you have at least a little control over it. So it’s not only Bad Wolf’s choices.”

Clara nodded. “Plus, it’s activated when you’re scared or in danger, like on the station.”

“Okay.” Rose took a deep breath. “So, in terms of what Bad Wolf is doing basically on its own, is there anyone we can think of it might try to find next?”

“There’s anyone else who was with us when we faced Davros,” Donna said. “Jack, maybe?”

Rose noticed Clara smile slightly, probably resigned to the fact that once again, she wouldn’t have any context for what the others were talking about.

“Bad Wolf is responsible for creating Jack, basically,” the Doctor answered. “He’s an anomaly. That might make Bad Wolf more likely to find him, or more likely to stay away. If we’re dealing with any paradoxes already, he might introduce an unstable element.”

“Doesn’t Jack Harkness always introduce an unstable element?” Martha asked, and everyone laughed.

“Okay then, what about Sarah Jane?”

“What’s she up to now?” Rose asked. “She has an adopted son, right? How are they?”

“Oh, she has a whole group of kids investigating aliens and stuff with her now,” the Doctor said. “I met them a few times - honestly, I’m almost hoping Bad Wolf stays away from her; I don’t want to get the kids involved.”

Martha nodded. “Yeah, this is a bit much for them. Especially since we don’t know what’s going on.”

“I hope Bad Wolf knows that,” Rose said nervously.

“If anything comes up, we can keep them out of it,” the Doctor reassured her.

“Alright, what about people who weren’t there at that point, Doctor?” Martha asked.

“Yeah, like River,” Clara said.

“Who’s River?” asked Martha.

“River Song?” said Donna. “You met her again?”

“They got married, actually,” Rose explained, almost laughing at the shocked reactions of the other three.

“I don’t think we’ll be seeing her,” the Doctor said quietly.

Clara’s eyebrows lowered in concern. “Why, Doctor? You never really explained…”

He glanced around the circle and Rose could tell he was reluctant to talk with everyone there, and she felt a surge of sympathy. Whatever happened, she knew it must be painful to bring up.

“For those of you who don’t know, we, well, we meet back-to-front. Our timelines are basically reversed. We keep diaries to keep track of which version of the other we’ve met. The last time I saw her – before Trenzalore anyway, but that’s complicated and a bit confusing – we were at the last point in her version of my timeline. I can’t ever see her again, or it would cause a paradox.”

“I’m sorry, Doctor,” Donna said quietly.

Rose looked at the floor. Oh. He had talked to her about River as if she was still around – he never was all that good at letting go, was he?

Martha frowned. “So, even if there isn’t anyone else Bad Wolf might want to find, what would the next step be? Why are we being recruited?”

“What about Victorian London?” Clara offered, and everyone turned towards her. “Well, Donna got sent back there for a reason, right? Not some other random time with someone else who could call the Doctor. So, maybe Vastra and Jenny and Strax are important to this.”

The Doctor nodded slowly. “Right. We should go back, find them, and then at least we’ll have backup for whatever’s next.”

“Who are they?” Martha asked, and Clara stayed behind to explain to her and Mickey as the Doctor and Donna headed for the console room. Rose clambered off of the couch and slowly followed them, looking up at this room’s skylight. It showed a clear sky rather than starlit night, and Rose couldn’t help thinking of the eye of a hurricane.

…………………….

The Tardis materialized with a whine in Vastra’s study this time, and Clara opened the doors to hear “Back so soon?”

She smiled. “Hi, Vastra. Yeah, we think we might have figured out a few things, and we need your help.”

“Ah, good, the timelines are still in sync!” the Doctor announced happily, moving awkwardly past Clara to exit the spaceship.

“You forgot the vortisaur, by the way,” Vastra added, followed by a loud squawk from an adjoining room.

The Doctor’s eyebrows raised. “Oh. Oops. I should probably take care of that.”

“The longer we keep it, the more annoyed Strax will be when you take it back.”

“I know, I know!”

Clara stepped out of the Tardis to let the others through. Rose waved at Vastra. “Oh, also,” she said, “this is Martha and Mickey. They used to travel with the Doctor too.”

Vastra smiled. “Looks like you’re picking up quite a few passengers, Doctor.”

He sighed. “Well, yes, at least the Tardis is a bit bigger now, not sure you’d all fit in the old console room.”

Martha looked fascinated as she stared at Vastra, and Clara could tell that Mickey was doing his best to not outwardly react to the Silurian’s strange appearance. She almost laughed, and walked to the hallway. “Shall we meet up in the courtyard?”

“I’ll fetch Jenny and Strax,” Vastra said. “You know, Doctor, one of these days you’ll actually park this box in the correct room.”

He tugged at his bowtie, opened his mouth to object, and then closed it again as he realized he didn’t really have a defense.

Vastra disappeared out a different doorway, and Clara hung back with Rose as they walked through the house. She glanced nervously at her but the blonde woman seemed to be doing fine – from this morning onward, honestly, she seemed to be feeling alright overall, able to talk about Bad Wolf without getting so frightened. Or, at least, she was better at hiding it.

She looked away before Rose could notice her worry. They’d be fine. They’d all be fine.

The other two members of the Paternoster Gang met up with the Doctor up ahead, but Vastra dropped back to talk to Rose instead.

“Jenny can hear what the Doctor has to say,” she said. “I had an idea of something I wanted to try – a way to focus Bad Wolf.”

“Alright,” Rose answered hesitantly. “If you think it will help.”

Vastra nodded. “Clara, would you join us?”

“Oh, sure, definitely.”

Rose smiled at her in response and Clara felt her pulse skip. It took actual effort to turn back to Vastra to add, “What did you have in mind?” and she realized that it was going to be hard from now on to not be hopelessly distracted by Rose Tyler.

“I thought that we could attempt to consciously activate Bad Wolf, like the way Donna was cured, in order to accomplish a specific task. The more you understand how it works, the better able we are to predict what’s coming.”

“Couldn’t that be dangerous?” said Clara. Anything that could help was important, but… well, she didn’t really want Rose to have to go through the whole passing-out thing again.

“I’m willing to try,” Rose replied. “It might help us later if I actually know what I’m doing. Besides, if I’m doing it on purpose, and it’s just something small, it can’t go all that wrong, can it?”

Vastra nodded. “Alright, then. If you’d follow me, it would probably be best to try this _outside…”_

They emerged into clear, crisp daylight. Snow lingered on the grass and frost speckled the trees, but it was better to brave the chill than to accidentally destroy something in the house. Clara lingered nearer the edge of the grassy clearing of the back yard while Rose and Vastra faced each other in the center. “So, what should I try to do?” Rose asked.

“First, you need to focus. Close your eyes, empty your mind of little distractions. Think about the energy of Bad Wolf, living inside.”

Rose hesitantly took a deep breath, and her movements stilled, standing tall on the grass and calming her breathing. Her eyes fluttered shut.

“Now, try to let it just _exist_. Let the energy form into whatever it wishes, whatever’s easiest. Guide it outside of you.”

For about ten seconds, nothing happened. Then Clara stared in amazement as Rose raised an arm, faint golden tendrils of light spiralling out from her hand and coalescing into a small sphere suspended in front of her. Rose slowly opened her eyes, gazing into the center of the light.

“It’s calm,” she said quietly. “It’s not… _loud_ , this time.”

“What does it feel like?” Clara blurted out, unable to stay off to the side any longer. She approached slowly, keeping her distance from the essence of Bad Wolf but looking intently at the manifestation.

“It’s always a bit like it’s singing,” Rose said, in the same trance-like voice. “But it’s never all that friendly about it. It’s like this time it’s recognizing me, singing using _me_ , using my blood and my heart.”

Clara gasped as Rose’s eyes began to glow, the light from the sphere intensifying and spreading a golden aura outwards along Rose’s hand and back along the contours of her body. “Are you sure this is still a good idea?” Clara asked quietly, glancing at Vastra. The Silurian looked a bit worried, but replied, “As long as it stays under control, I think we’re fine.” More loudly - “Rose, what if you try actively doing something with it? Moving that branch, for example?”

Rose glanced over toward where she was gesturing, and flicked her wrist in the direction of a fallen branch about the length of her arm. The golden light languidly flowed through the air to fall like stardust on the branch, which spiraled up in an arc.

“That’s easy,” Rose said slowly, a small smile playing across her face. “I can do so much more than that…”

Her eyes narrowed and the branch seemed to flicker in the air, before the particles of light hissed and cracked and burned, the branch itself beginning to dissolve into fragments and mirages. In a moment, nothing remained but the residue of golden dust. “We can do so much…” she murmured.

Clara, worried, started to reach out a hand but halted as she saw the golden light dancing over Rose’s skin. She glanced toward Vastra, who seemed to be weighing their options.

“This is good progress, I think,” the Silurian said calmly, doing her best to hide the tension in her face. “But perhaps we should take a break for a minute…”

“But I can see everything,” she said. “It’s not like before, it’s…” she blinked, shaking her head. “It’s… there’s so much light.” Her hand wavered and the Bad Wolf energy returned to dance in streams of gold around her arm. “I could do anything,” she breathed, and her eyes opened wide with a gasp and the light sped up.

“Rose, you control this,” Vastra said, urgency underlying her words. “Keep ahold of it, don’t let it go.”

“I don’t want to stop… I think it’s… it wants...” She raised both of her hands in front of her, palms facing the sky, and the light suddenly shot outwards in all directions, Rose’s hair flying back and her eyes wide with golden energy.

“Rose!” Clara shouted, and instinctively stepped forward to grab her arm, but was sent flying backwards by a shock from Bad Wolf.

“Rose, _stop,_ you’re letting it take over --”

Vastra cried out too as the light crashed outwards in another shockwave, Rose still standing at the center of the disturbance.

“It’s calling,” she whispered.

 _“What_ is?” Clara asked desperately. “Rose, please, come _back,_ you’re not _you.”_

“The end of everything.” The faint smile on Rose’s face was one of the most terrifying things she’d ever seen.

“Rose!” The Doctor was running out into the yard. “We saw -- Vastra, what’s happening?” Everyone hung back nervously.

“We thought if she could just focus her power --”

“You mean you told her to activate that thing?”

“She _volunteered,_ Donna, we didn’t know it would --”

Clara stared transfixed at the vortex that was beginning to form in front of Rose, the argument behind her fading into the background. With a cry of shock, Rose fell away from the light, her eyes blinking back to normal and the calm assurance disappearing and leaving nothing but fear in its wake. “What’s… what did I…?”

“Rose!” she shouted again, and caught hold of her hand, but just as she did, the entire vortex sang out with a shockwave of the Bad Wolf energy, knocking Clara backwards as Rose was pulled into the center of the chaos.

_“No!”_

And then she was gone. Clara froze in shock as the vortex opened one last time and two figures fell out onto the snow-dusted ground, before the light collapsed in on itself and vanished.

_Rose._

Clara crouched on the grass as the Doctor walked up behind her, peering at the shapes on the ground. He stiffened. “No,” he breathed, barely loud enough for her to hear. “It can’t be.”

Martha rushed forward and knelt next to the newcomers who been thrown unceremoniously through space or time or _something_ , checking for lifesigns. “They’re both breathing,” she said, “and… Doctor, they both have _two hearts.”_ She glanced up at the Doctor, frowning at the look on his face. “What happened? What did Rose do? Who are they?”

Clara didn’t care. She didn’t want to know who they were, she didn’t want to see. She wanted Rose _back._ She stood slowly. “Doctor, where is she?” she murmured. “Tell me you have a way to find her.”

But he was staring at the two men on the ground, who both seemed to be waking up. “What in the name of Rassilon?” one of them muttered, the one who Clara could see, now that her eyes readjusted from the light of Bad Wolf, was wearing some sort of formal robes. The other immediately sat up, trying to focus on everyone standing around the clearing. “Where am I?” he asked, still a bit out of it. “Have I forgotten something important again? Because that would be unfortunate.”

“You can’t be here,” the Doctor said, his voice dark. “This isn’t possible.”

Vastra knelt down next to the newcomers. “You’re in 1893, London, Earth,” she said calmly. “Who are you?”

The man gasped. “You’re a Silurian! That’s brilliant! What are you doing out on the surface in this timeframe? Oh, nevermind, lots of other questions. Narvin, look! You haven’t been to Earth yet, have you?”

 _“Earth?_ We _can’t_ be on Earth, don’t be ridiculous.” The man in the black and white robes scrambled to his feet and glanced around the circle in disbelief.

“Oh, right, introductions,” the first man said. “This is Narvin, and I, well, I’m the Doctor. Pleased to meet you.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's going to start going reeeeaaally canon-divergent here, and i'll explain a bit more next time, but just to let you know, not everything that gets explained or happens later matches canon (like, beyond the Rose and other companions stuff, I mean) or even my own headcanons. So, yeah.


	13. Chapter 13

Rose woke up staring at what could only be described as an ominous ceiling. Seriously, whoever decorated this place decided that deep black, cracked stone was the best choice for pretty much all interior surfaces, and if they were going for ‘dark and foreboding,’ it was probably a good decision.

Rose groaned and propped herself up on her elbows, trying to remember where she might be. There was something about a light, and she remembered being scared, reaching out, Clara --

She frowned and slowly got to her feet, turning in a circle to take in her surroundings. It was basically just a hallway, and in the distance she could hear low rumbling, shouting. Then footsteps - someone was running down the hallway toward her. She froze, unsure of what to do, where to go. There wasn’t really anywhere to hide, and whoever it was would hear her if she ran the other way.

The source of the footsteps rounded the corner, and Rose saw that it was someone in what appeared to be a soldier’s uniform, made out of dark cloth and some sort of dark red armor. He narrowed his eyes as he spotted her. “What are you doing here?” he asked, suspicious. He moved his hand toward the weapon holstered at his hip. “All civilians are being evacuated from the Citadel!”

“I, uh, sorry. I got lost.” Rose almost winced at the transparency of her own excuse, but she didn’t exactly have a lot of options - she didn’t even know where she was.

The soldier sighed, exasperated. “Well get out of the tunnels at least, they’ll be here in less than thirty microspans. One of the refugees, I’d expect? This is _not_ part of my job description. Down the hall, turn left, up the stairs. Get _out.”_

Rose jumped and hurried off in the direction the soldier had come from as he continued down the hallway, glad that she’d gotten away that easily. Where _was_ she? She must have come here through that… vortex, or whatever it had been that Bad Wolf had created. She felt a surge of fear as she remembered the feeling of power that had coursed through the golden energy. She couldn’t see the danger in what she was until it was too late…

She came to a fork in the passageway. To the left, a stairway led up to something hopefully a bit less depressing than this corridor. Rose almost considered listening to the soldier, but worried that she’d get pulled away in whatever this evacuation was and get found out. The path on the right, however, seemed as gloomy as the hallway she’d just left, and she was still thinking left might be a valid option when someone else came charging down the staircase.

“Ow!” They both crashed to the ground and Rose scrambled backwards as the newcomer jumped to her feet with a knife.

“Who are you?” she narrowed her eyes but dropped back slightly from the aggressive posture. “You are not one of the guards.”

“Uh… I got lost.” Rose slowly stood up, eyeing the weapon.

She raised her eyebrows. “You must be _very_ lost to be this far from the evacuations, if that is where you are going.”

Rose winced. She knew it was only a matter of time, really.

“This is probably going to sound strange but… what planet is this?”

The woman with the knife looked at her in shock. “How can you not know where you are? There is no way through the barriers, except with a Battle Tardis.”

“A Tardis?” Rose forgot to breathe. “Is… are we…”

Shaking her head, she pushed past Rose to head down the passageway on the right. “I do not have time for this.”

Rose, mouth open, stared after her. “Wait!” she yelled after a moment. “Are we on Gallifrey?” She chased after her, struggling to keep up with the woman purposefully striding down the hallway.

“Yes, and if you are not quiet you will alert the guards.” There was a faint crash from up ahead and she ducked back against the wall, pressing Rose back as well with her arm. “Now leave, or if you must, stay _silent,”_ she hissed.

Someone stalked angrily down the hall past where Rose could see. “Lord Braxiatel has been released on President Rassilon’s orders,” a muffled, irate voice echoed from the same direction. “And it is none of your business!”

The guard was answered by yelling from even further away, unintelligible to Rose. The woman tensed and slid cautiously down the corridor as the footsteps of the guard dwindled in the distance, and Rose followed, unsure what else to do.

Rose hesitantly started to whisper, “but isn’t there a -”

A glare from her mystery companion made her quickly close her mouth. No talking. Right.

The stopped before an arched doorway without a door, an entryway to some more elaborate set of labyrinthine chambers, probably; Rose couldn’t see that far into the gloom while hiding against the wall. The woman peered around the corner and drew back with her hand on her knife. “There are three guards,” she said under her breath to Rose. _“Stay here,_ and do not interfere! You could get both of us killed.”

“If there are guards, they’ll have guns, won’t they?” Rose hissed back. “You don’t stand a chance.”

“I am a warrior of the Sevateem!” she answered with as much anger as she could within the necessity for silence, and Rose shrank back. “And I have no choice,” she continued. “I had help, but… we were ambushed on the way.”

“Look, I’m just saying, I could be a distraction or something, right?”

She narrowed her eyes. “...That might work. Why _are_ you still here, anyway?”

“I want answers, and I think I’m more likely to get them from you than one of the guards.” Rose raised her head defiantly.

“Alright then. You help me, and I will tell you whatever you need to know. But we do not have the time. If you are going to go, go now!”

Rose took a deep breath and dashed across the opening of the hallway. Sure enough, she could hear a faint exclamation from a voice inside the structure, and footsteps following. She ducked to the left through another passage and suddenly heard a loud thud - against her better judgement she stopped to look back in time to see the woman hit one of the guards on the back of his helmet with the hilt of her knife, another guard unconscious on the ground.

As the woman charged inside, Rose could hear the sharp sting of weapons fire, cut off by a loud yelp from what she assumed was the third guard. She decided to follow, turning back the way she’d come and hesitantly slipping through the doorway. The room was clear, and she caught the last hint of movement in the passage to her left - she followed, hearing another exclamation from a guard and the clang of metal hitting metal, and then, as she emerged into the room, a shocked voice up ahead. “Leela?”

Rose hung back by the door as a woman with short blond hair stood up with a start in the back of one of the stark cells that lined the walls - Rose realized belatedly that this was some sort of prison facility; that the woman who crashed into her on the stairs - Leela, apparently - hadn’t been after some thing or weapon the soldiers were guarding, but rather a person.

A prison on Gallifrey, though? They should be busy fighting the Daleks, not each other.

“We have little time,” Leela said, using a device she’d grabbed from the guard to unlock the cell door. “They will have seen us on cameras and alarms.”

“They took Brax,” said the woman in the cell. “They wouldn’t tell me why, they just took him.”

“We shall find him, then,” she said, finishing deactivating what seemed to be a forcefield acting as a door. “It is good to see you again, Romana,” she added.

“And you,” she replied with a small smile.

And then she spotted Rose.

“Who are you?” she narrowed her eyes and Rose shrank back slightly. “I’m, um…”

Leela began walking back to the door. “I ran into her in the tunnels - she helped distract the guards. She says she wants answers, and did not know we were on Gallifrey. It seems impossible, but I can sense the truth in her words.”

“So, yeah,” Rose said, “if someone could explain this whole… situation, that would be great. I, uh… I shouldn’t _be_ here.”

Romana’s eyebrows raised. “I’ll say. You’re not a Time Lord, are you?”

“Ah…. no.”

They started quickly back the way Rose had come down the corridors, and she was impressed that Leela seemed to know the way back.

“That is alright,” Leela said with a smile. “I am not a Time Lord either.”

_“Leela.”_

“She was helpful!”

Romana sighed. “We’re in the middle of a war and the transduction barriers are up, so there’s no way you could possibly have gotten here without knowing exactly where and when you were going, and even then it would be near impossible.”

She swept around a corner and back to the more basic stretch of the maze of hallways, still managing to look imperious in singed robes and hair that had clearly been chopped short by hand. Rose wondered why she’d been locked up in the first place, and briefly considered the idea that perhaps helping someone in a Gallifreyan prison escape was not necessarily the best course of action.

“So,” she continued, “I need to know how you got in, and how you know of Gallifrey in the first place. Clearly you are not from the Academy - all off-worlders were sent away years ago.”

“It’s a bit complicated…”

Romana half-stopped and spun around to confront her, but the blaring of alarms urged them onward. “Explain. _Now.”_

“There’s a Time Lord called the Doctor,” Rose began, and Leela gasped.

“You know the Doctor? Did you travel with him?”

“Yes!” Rose smiled in relief. “I - that’s how I know about Gallifrey and everything, but - well, he said the war’s Time Locked, I shouldn’t have been able to get in. There’s this, I don’t know, this energy or something, Bad Wolf --”

“Time Locked?” Romana frowned. “You’re right, you _shouldn’t_ have been able to get in, but because of the barriers and the Dalek forces, not because of any Time Lock. It’s being considered as a last resort, but…”

“We should find Braxiatel,” Leela said, and Romana nodded as they dodged down another hallway to avoid some sort of patrol.

“They’ll send recon drones soon,” Romana muttered. “All this effort, and the Dalek fleet right around the corner - anyway, you know about the war? The Doctor - he must have made it out, he must be…”

“So the war ends, then,” Leela said. “And there is… survival.”

Rose blinked. “I - I shouldn’t -”

“No, I’m sorry, she’s right,” Romana interrupted. “Leela, if she tells us anything too specific it could damage the timeline; we have enough paradoxes floating around as it is.”

“What was it you said, though?” the non-Time-Lord asked Rose. “Bad Wolf - how is it you got here, in the rush of battle and the chaos of fear?”

They reached the stairwell as a few guards caught sight of them from deeper in the complex. “Never mind that,” Romana said. “Run!”

They raced up the steps as someone behind them yelled out.

As they got up into the open, Rose in behind, she turned back with a shout and a bolt of golden energy flowed back away from her into the doorway of the top of the stairs. There was a crash and the floor shook as the entrance collapsed, and Rose fell backwards onto the ground.

Silence.

Rose scrambled to her feet to see the other two staring at her in shock. “Well,” said Romana, “I take it that was Bad Wolf?”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY SO yeah, new characters. I'm going to take this opportunity to talk about a thing - so, as you can probably already tell, there's a lot here related to the Time War that doesn't follow canon, even beyond the whole Rose thing. These aren't even my headcanons or anything, it's honestly just what happens to work with the story. I'm kind of scared that people are going to be like 'bUT THAT CAN'T HAPPEN' or 'why are you against what happened in canon' and, like, that's not it at all. These aren't headcanons or what i wish happened or anything and i actually love what is canon/hinted at in-universe, but i started planning this story a long time ago and this is just what happens to work well for this one fic.


	14. Chapter 14

“We _can’t_ be on Earth; that’s absurd.”

“Oi, penguin man, where are you from then?”

“What’s a _penguin?”_

Clara ignored both Donna and the newcomer, Narvin. “The Doctor?” she asked.

“Which regeneration?” Vastra interrupted. “I could have sworn I knew about the three who were after…”

The Doctor - that is, if it really was him, anyway - looked a bit taken aback. “Oh, do I know you, then? Later, I mean. I’m the Eighth.” He glanced around at the crowd. “You don’t all look like you belong in 1893.”

 _Her_ Doctor, meanwhile, had backed away, behind where Clara was now standing. His silence felt like an ominous shadow.

Narvin shot another glare at Donna before tugging at the other Doctor’s jacket. “We need to get back to Gallifrey, head for the Citadel. We don’t have time for -”

“Gallifrey?”

A hush fell over the others as Clara took a small step forward, her voice low.

“No. That’s… that’s impossible. You aren’t from Gallifrey because… because if you’re here, then she’s there, and there isn’t _there_ anymore.”

Silence.

Narvin opened his mouth to speak, only to eventually say, “...I’m confused.”

There was an exasperated sigh from behind Clara and her Doctor strode forward to the center of the group, pulled out his sonic and pointed it at the house. “Alright, everyone, inside, now. We can --”

“Is that --”

“Yes, now _inside.”_

“So you’re --”

“Yes, and you’re --”

“A bowtie, really --”

“Oh, shut up.”

The other Doctor frowned. “Why didn’t you just --”

“Because you. Shouldn’t. Be. Here.”

“Now _that_ I’ll agree with,” Narvin muttered.

Clara stayed frozen for a moment as the rest of them started to move back to the house, and Martha gently took her hand to lead her with them. Her look of sympathy both helped and hurt, and Clara realized that she must have figured it out, how she felt about Rose. It didn’t matter now.

The other Doctor skidded to a halt when he spotted Strax, and brandished his own sonic screwdriver.

“Sontaran! Look out everyone, there’s --”

Jenny hurriedly stepped in. “It’s alright, he’s with us. You know him. In the future, I mean.”

Strax crossed his arms. “If he wishes a battle, I shall fight for the glory of the Sontaran empire --”

“No, no, Strax, this way,” Vastra intervened, pulling the Sontaran off to the side. “We’ve got a report of a disappearance in Regents Park; I need you to investigate since we’ll be stuck here for a while.”

He left the room with a grumble, which Clara decided was probably for the best; this whole situation was complicated enough as it was.

Mickey was muttering something to Martha, the two Doctors were now arguing about why the older one was allied with a _Sontaran_ , and Narvin had somehow managed to almost knock over a statue in the corner and was getting scolded by an annoyed Jenny. Donna climbed up on a low table in the center of the room and waved her arms. “Oi! You lot!”

The chaos subsided as everyone turned to stare at her. “Having _one_ of you around is bad enough. Okay. So, the two of you --” she pointed at the other Doctor and the black-and-white-robe-wearing Time Lord “-- are from Gallifrey. We all know the Doctor. You don’t know any of us. Rose made a portal and you fell through, and so did she, which probably means she’s on Gallifrey. We can’t get back cause it’s Time Locked. Any questions?”

Sound erupted again.

“But it’s _not_ Time Locked, it’s --”

“Who’s Rose?”

“Are they from the Time War, cause that’s --”

Clara took a deep breath. “Everybody, _shut up!”_

Silence.

“Look,” she said, “Donna’s right, we need to focus and figure this out, and we can’t do that if you’re all trying to have your say at the same time.”

Donna tried and failed to hide laughter. Narvin looked like he was about to speak, but the younger Doctor put his hand over his mouth, earning a death glare from the other Time Lord.

Vastra stepped forward. “Now, I think the first question here, Doctor, is whether you _remember_ this.”

Everyone looked at Clara’s Doctor, who glanced back and forth nervously. “Ah, actually… _no._ Which is a bit confusing honestly.”

The other Doctor raised an eyebrow. “Really? Why wouldn’t I remember meeting me?”

Realizing that everyone was still waiting for a bit more of an explanation, the older Doctor sighed. “Look, I remember being on Gallifrey, arguing with you --” he gestured at Narvin “-- about going to the Citadel or my Tardis, and then there’s… nothing. Until, well, until after I regenerated.”

The other Doctor’s mouth dropped open. “I’m going to _regenerate?”_

“That doesn’t exactly bode well for the rest of us either,” Narvin muttered.

“So, the war’s still happening for you two,” Martha confirmed.

“Yes, which apparently means you all met me _after_ the war.”

Narvin crossed his arms. “So we win, then.”

Silence.

Clara’s Doctor wouldn’t meet the other one’s eyes. “Ah,” the younger Doctor said. “I have a choice to make then, don’t I?”

He nodded curtly. Narvin looked back and forth between the two Time Lords. “What choice? Will someone just tell me what’s going on? Is this why you wouldn’t go back to the Capitol when --”

“Partly, yes, partly because Rassilon _would shoot us on sight,_ Narvin, I’m still not entirely sure what you were thinking, but anyway, we are not discussing this _now_ there are already enough paradoxes in this room --”

“Yes, I think _now_ is a very good time for this discussion, Doctor --”

“How do you get back?” Clara broke in, earning a couple of shocked looks as the Time Lords seemed to remember there were other people in the room.

“How do you get back to Gallifrey?” she asked again.

“...I suppose that depends on how we got here,” the younger Doctor said eventually, “which I’m still not exactly clear on.”

The Doctor didn’t seem very forthcoming with an explanation, and given that the other humans - and Silurian - seemed to be looking to her to speak, Clara realized that this was probably her job. “Rose, she was travelling with us, she has these abilities,” she said. “It’s called Bad Wolf; it’s this _entity_ or something that was created when she looked into the heart of the Tardis a long time ago and absorbed part of the Time Vortex. They thought it was gone, but it came back, and it’s been reaching out, finding all of us. She can’t really control it - she opened this portal, or something, and she fell through, and then you two showed up here.”

Narvin looked like he was starting to piece together a few things, and he glanced back and forth between the two Doctors, seeming to be on the verge of objecting again. And that’s when a loud thunderclap from outside shattered the air around them in a huge shockwave.

Clara fell backward with a gasp and immediately scrambled to her feet in a frantic rush to get outside along with everyone else. Something was glowing in the sky, rapidly shooting toward them like a fiery comet.

“Out of the way!” the Doctor shouted, but in the few seconds before the thing hit it was kinda hard to tell exactly where _was_ out of the way, and Clara dodged to the side, holding her breath, no time to wonder what it was or where it came from --

_ crash. _


	15. Chapter 15

The residual golden light still hummed around Rose’s hands as she staggered a bit and glanced nervously at Romana and Leela.

“That’s time energy,” Romana muttered, moving in a sudden rush to stand next to her, cautiously reaching out a hand to the fading shimmer. “We need to keep moving, to get up to the higher levels. Tell me everything, now.”

Leela led the way through the citadel, Romana and Rose following right behind.

“When I was travelling with the Doctor,” Rose began, “there was an, uh, incident, with the Daleks, and I absorbed the Time Vortex. It gave me these abilities, but the Doctor took it out of me because it would have killed me. The powers are starting to come back now, but we don’t know why.”

“So that’s how you got through all the barriers.”

“I guess.”

Leela held out a hand and they all stopped, Rose barely daring to breathe, as a group of other Time Lords crossed the hallway somewhere up around the corner. As they kept moving, she turned to Romana. “Alright, now it’s your turn.”

“Hmm?”

“What’s happening here? Where’s the Doctor? Why were you locked up?”

“Very well,” she said reluctantly. “I am Romanadvoratrelundar, former President of Gallifrey -- when the Daleks invaded and the Time War began, some of the Cardinals decided that we needed different leadership.”

“They resurrected Rassilon, the first Time Lord president,” Leela broke in. “That idiotic, cruel, cowardly --”

“Yes, and he staged a coup. Most of the older traditionalists supported him, and he imprisoned me and Brax, and he exiled Leela.”

“He does terrible things in this war,” the other woman said quietly. “He murders innocents on any slight chance he can stop the Daleks. He uses forbidden weapons, things these Time Lords had locked up long ago.”

“He uses Gallifreyans as weapons too,” said Romana. “He looms soldiers, he force-regenerates them. He called all the exiles and renegades back to Gallifrey to serve on the front lines.”

“He is no better than the Daleks,” Leela muttered.

Rose glanced back and forth between the two of them. “So, now that you’re free, what are you planning?”

“We can’t exactly do much against Rassilon on our own, as much as I wish --”

“Maybe the Time Lords would listen now, since they have seen what he is willing to do. They need you, they need a good leader, with the Daleks so --”

“Um, also, didn’t the soldiers say the Daleks were _currently approaching the city?”_ Rose interjected.

“Ah. Yes. That. Which is why we’re currently going up to the top levels of the Citadel to retrieve Braxiatel.”

“Who is --”

“You said that he was released, Romana?”

She nodded. “Whatever Rassilon has planned, it’s probably not good. What about Narvin, Leela?”

“I… I have not heard from Narvin in some time,” came the reply. “He must not be in the Capitol anymore.”

“Alright, I give in,” Rose muttered. “I’ll ask. Who are Braxiatel and Narvin?”

By now, the three of them had made it up to a level where windows let in the dull red light of one of Gallifrey’s setting suns. Rose looked around in amazement at the empty but ornate corridor, which curved slowly off to the left. The sound of alarms had faded below the stone floors.

“Brax was one of those called back during the war,” Romana began.

“He was our friend, who we thought we lost long ago,” Leela broke in.

Romana smiled slightly. “Yes. He’s the Doctor’s brother, actually. And Narvin… Narvin was the leader of the Celestial Intervention Agency -- still is, apparently. He was smart enough not to outwardly oppose Rassilon when he took power.”

“So after we find Braxiatel, then what?”

“We get to my Tardis,” said Romana. “That’ll give us a base to figure out what to do about the Daleks, and about Rassilon.”

“What about, um…”

“You getting home?”

“Yeah. No offense, but I’d prefer not to be here when the war ends. What about the Doctor? I probably shouldn’t meet him because, you know, paradoxes, but…”

“We have not seen him since Rassilon was brought back,” said Leela. “He was also called to fight, but he resisted, for a time.”

“Something happened to him,” Romana said quietly. “Something he won’t talk about. He’s… changed.”

A commotion up ahead brought them to a halt, as Rose looked frantically around the hallway. They were too far away from anywhere to hide or duck out of sight in the long corridor.

“Romana,” Leela said urgently, “we passed a door a little ways back --”

“Locked, and they’ll have removed my bioprint from the system,” she replied, her voice low.

Leela pulled out her knife, and Rose took a deep breath as a group of Gallifreyan soldiers came into view. Five Time Lords armed with stasers, against a Time Lord and two humans with one knife between them. Great.

The leading soldier stepped forward, staser drawn. “However you escaped, you’ll come with us now. The Lord President will wish to speak with you.”

Rose could tell that Leela was desperate to attack, to do something, but that even she realized that there wasn’t any hope of success. With a glance at Romana, Leela slowly pocketed the knife and stepped back to let Romana take the lead as they approached the soldiers. “What do we do know?” Rose asked under her breath.

“We do not seem to have a choice,” came the muttered reply.

“We hope that Braxiatel is there as well,” Romana interrupted. “And,” she added more quietly, “once we find him, you’re probably going to need to do whatever you did in the tunnels back there to the guards who were following us.”

At a nod from the lead soldier, two of them broke away to continue whatever that patrol had been, well, patrolling. Still, three against three wasn’t much of an improvement, when the other three all had weapons and they didn’t have any element of surprise. Rose briefly considered activating Bad Wolf _now_ , but Romana was probably right. At the very least, they might find out more about Rassilon’s activities since the Time Lord and her… friend? Soldier? Advisor? had been removed from power. And Braxiatel could be there. Plus, there was every chance that if they escaped now, they’d just run into more soldiers or guards later. Or that the next time she used Bad Wolf, Rose would collapse again.

They arrived at a metal door after a few minutes of silence, and one of the soldiers tapped a code into the panel next to it. The door slid open and they climbed into a lift made of the same polished material as the tiled floor. “Inside,” said one of the soldiers, poking at Leela with his staser, and Rose was very glad she’d hopefully never be on the other end of the death glare she gave him.

“Does Rassilon know we escaped?” Romana asked as the lift started moving.

“He will now,” the leader muttered.

Romana raised an eyebrow. “Busy with war plans, then?”

Silence.

Rose had gasped as the lift shot upward faster than she’d expected, and now she had a sense of weightlessness as it stopped. The doors slid open with a whirring noise, and one soldier stepped out in front as the other two followed behind, stasers pointed at the group.

The room they’d emerged into was more like a grand hallway, long and with an arched ceiling that hummed as blue circles and spirals twirled across screens on every surface. Rose realized that the designs were probably Gallifreyan writing; it looked similar to what the Doctor had once shown her. Close to the center, a table completely covered in one large screen displayed more glowing writing and some sort of projection of ships and stars. It was the man at the edge of the table who dominated the room, however. He had dark hair and an imposing figure, and he wore elaborate red robes. He wasn’t wearing the strange hats or collars or whatever they were that adorned the other four Time Lords who he’d been talking to, and it made him seem more serious, more dangerous. As he stood back from the table to turn to face them, Rose caught a glimpse of some sort of metal glove on his right hand.

“We caught the former president escaping, Lord Rassilon,” the lead guard began to explain. “Apparently the savage helped her. And this one --” He prodded Rose with his staser, and she did her best to avoid reacting as she stumbled forward a bit.

Romana folded her arms. “Where’s Braxiatel?” she asked before the other Time Lord could get a word in.

Barely contained anger simmered in his response. “We have a situation that required his input. And now that I think about it, I’m sure you could be just as useful. It seems you’re more trouble than you’re worth, anyway.” He made a sweeping gesture toward the side door. “Take her to the mind probe.”

Romana’s eyes went wide and her composure fell for the first time since Rose had met her.

Rassilon glanced back at the other two and frowned. “Another human? Romana, you dissapoint. I’m not sure where you’re finding them, but you shouldn’t be entirely surprised at your removal from power given the company you keep.” He waved the hand with the glove at the guards. “As for the humans, lock them up, execute them, whatever you want.”

There was a flurry of motion as the guards went to grab the three of them again. Rose took a deep breath as Bad Wolf started to wake up, the warmth of the energy spreading in her blood. Now or never, apparently.

 _“What did you do to Brax?”_ Romana shouted.

Rassilon turned back to the table. “We have a bit of a Doctor problem,” he muttered. “Who better to tell us how to catch him than his brother? A pity he fought the mind probe...”

With a shout, Rose lashed out against the guard nearest her, light blasting from the point where she touched him. The other soldiers stumbled back in alarm, and Rose was vaguely aware of the other Time Lords in the room exclaiming as the whole place flooded with gold fire.

Leela grabbed her arm and pulled her backward, and the three of them were out a different door, Rassilon’s roar of outrage echoing behind them. The light dwindled away from Rose’s fingertips as Bad Wolf sealed the door, and she stumbled and almost fell to the ground as a wave of darkness spread across her vision. As someone dragged her upright, she heard a shout up ahead - “Where are we going?”

“The Red Vault. They’ll have my Tardis!”

“What about Brax?”

“...I don’t think there’s anything we can do.”

Rose struggled to stay alert as the weakness faded until she was able to run on her own. “What do you mean?” she asked in between catching her breath.

“Rassilon could be lying but… it would make sense. Braxiatel has very strong mental defenses; he would have fought the mind probe as long as he could to prevent Rassilon from finding anything about the Doctor. If he even knew anything. But it would’ve been in his nature to fight it, and maybe even think he could beat it, to stop them from getting any of his other secrets. When I was president I banned the mind probe for a reason; it’s dangerous under the best of circumstances, but if you resist… it destroys your brain and your consciousness.”

“So that’s it?”

“No,” Leela said. “I do not just _give up_ that easily, Romana,” she muttered as they kept running through the corridors.

“I’m not giving up either!” Romana’s voice was strained. “But we can’t stay here. We have to get off-planet, at least temporarily. Even Rassilon and the war council will be moving from the Capitol soon.”

They skidded to a halt in front of a door with a warning label, which Romana promptly ignored as she pushed it open. Lights flickered on the walls. The Time Lord led the way directly toward a sleek-looking silver craft off to the left.

“So that’s what…”

“...a Tardis actually looks like? No, Rose, only a Presidential Tardis.” Romana flung the doors open. “I believe the Doctor’s Type 40 looks more like a simple cylinder, not that we’d know for sure given that he’s never bothered to fix the bloody thing’s Chameleon Circuit.”

It was, of course, bigger on the inside, but far more organized and stylized than the Doctor’s ever had been. Rose gaped at the console, which whirred at the center and took up half the room.

There was warmth in Romana’s voice when she spoke again. “I do miss it, though. These newer ones don’t have the same sense of… home, I suppose. Or companionship.”

Rose glanced back nervously as a faint crash rumbled outside. “So, what’s the plan?”

"Romana, they will have codes and alarms to stop us from leaving."

"Yes, and the _original_ plan was for Brax to get us past those codes. The Tardis is locked out - we can't take off, _unless_ \--" she turned to Rose "--we do something impossible."

Rose's eyes widened. "You mean Bad Wolf?"

She nodded. "You got past the barriers on your way in, and we need you to get us back out. Staying close to Gallifrey, but not in the path of the Daleks or our own battle fleet."

Rose hesitated. "I'll do it," she said, "but you need to know - Bad Wolf kind of has a mind of its own. I can get it started, push it in the right direction, but I probably won't have much control over where we end up if Bad Wolf itself has other ideas."

"As long as we get out of here before we get caught or the Daleks attack."

Rose took a deep breath and reached out to the console. It was becoming even easier to activate the gold energy, and it spiraled out through her hand until it swirled around the time rotor. The console activated with a sudden rush of light, and she gasped in sync with the machine that began whirring as the light spread through the room.

She lost awareness of the Tardis around her; the energy began to pull and push at her until it felt like it was the only thing keeping her breathing, tugging at her air and her blood and her soul. Bad Wolf was her lifeforce, and it was her lifeline. Someone said something? She thought - she felt - she wasn’t sure if time was passing in seconds or minutes or microspans or heartbeats. The gold light was all she could see.

Bad Wolf _pulled_ at something in the fabric of the universe, and Rose lost contact with the light; she thought she felt herself falling, there was a sharp pain in her arm, and then the light was replaced by nothingness.

Dim sounds filtered through her consciousness as everything flickered. Shattering glass, fire - “What’s happening?” - a shower of sparks, a dull roar, a single heartbeat - hers? - “We’re crashing!”

Nothing.

 

 


	16. Chapter 16

Everything was quiet. Clara let out the breath she’d been holding and cautiously uncurled her body and propped herself up on her elbows to look at the remains of the yard behind Paternoster Row.

Something large and metallic silver was currently half-buried in a crater that stretched in a jagged line from one side of the yard to the other. A faint trace of gold energy was dispersing from the edges of the craft, a hint of light that sent Clara scrambling to her feet and running toward it before the others could react. The Doctor’s faint exclamation trailed after her but she ignored him, skidding to a halt in front of the silver - well, spaceship, she assumed - when she realized she didn’t know what to do next.

“Did you see that?” she asked the Doctor as everyone slowly gathered around.

“I mean, I think we’re all seeing the spaceship…” Mickey muttered.

 _“No_ , the light! The gold light, like, like --”

“Bad Wolf?” Vastra asked.

“Yeah.”

Narvin gasped. “That’s a Tardis!” he said as he stepped closer. “That’s --”

“From Gallifrey,” the Doctor said.

“No - well, yes --” the other Time Lord tried to say. “But not just that, it’s --”

Everyone jumped back as the door to the other Tardis opened with a hiss, letting the dull _bong, bong_ of the cloister bell to echo out of the entrance. A figure stumbled out of the somewhat smoky interior and onto the remains of the grass. “Well that didn’t exactly…” the woman caught sight of the various people scattered in a rough semicircle, and her eyes widened. “Oh _no.”_

“Romana?” Narvin’s voice was rough as he stepped around from the other side of the Tardis.

She turned to face him, her words warm with something that sounded like relief. “Narvin! And --” she glanced over -- “Doctor?” she asked, seeing the younger version standing a bit nearer the house.

“Romana, something _went wrong…”_ A second woman emerged from the crashed Tardis, and halted with a start at the sight of everyone.

“Leela!”

“Narvin?”

Clara’s Doctor hung back for a moment, the shock clear on his face. So many old faces, old friends, people he must have thought he'd never be able to see again.

"Romana, Leela, how did you get off Gallifrey?" the younger Doctor asked.

"How did _you two_ get off Gallifrey?"

"Wait, Leela, where's Rose?" Romana asked.

Clara took a deep breath. "Rose is with you?" She approached the Tardis's entrance, sensing the Doctor right behind her.

Romana's eyes widened. "Oh, this must be where she came from - Bad Wolf sent her back _here,"_ she said.

"We're on _Earth,"_ Narvin muttered, as Leela held out a hand as a gesture for a Clara to stay back at the doors to the ship. "Careful, there is still smoke." The woman - she couldn't be a Time Lord, could she, with that outfit? - stepped inside and nodded at her and the Doctor to follow.

Clara's vision adjusted to the dimly lit interior; it was bigger on the inside, of course, but with cables dangling and sparks flashing from debris every so often. She could faintly hear Donna outside -- “so, you’re _all_ Time Lords then? Blimey, is Bad Wolf _collecting_ you or something?” -- but the further she stepped into the control room, the harder it was to tell what was going on outside.

“This is a lot bigger than ours,” Clara breathed.

Leela smiled. “It is a _presidential_ Tardis.”

“Wait, so, that means --”

“I found her!” the Doctor called from off to Clara’s left. She turned and scrambled over broken wires, Leela somewhere behind her, until she caught sight of the Doctor crouched over someone sprawled across the floor.

“Rose!” she gasped, and ran to kneel beside her. The blonde girl was unconscious, and Clara let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding when she saw that Rose was still breathing. “Rose?” She reached out hesitantly to brush the hair back from her face, and got no response. “What happened?” she asked, turning to look back at Leela.

“We had to escape the Daleks and the guards, and there was no way past the barriers,” she replied. “Rose used Bad Wolf to get us out, but… I do not know what happened after.”

“Rose must have been sent to find Gallifrey, and you two,” the Doctor said. “And was then pulled back here, but the energy required to create the portal, and get past the Time Lock, is an enormous cost.” He looked up, then, and smiled despite the situation. “And it’s good to see you again, Savage.”

Leela grinned. “Doctor!” She launched herself into a hug. “There are _two_ of you here!”

Rose stirred with a faint murmur, and Clara immediately turned back to her. “Rose? Can you hear me?”

She blinked slightly, eventually focusing on Clara with a smile. “Hey.”

“Hey,” she replied, an answering smile spreading across her face. She reached out and Rose clung on to her arm to sit up. “Are you okay?”

“I think so. Oh, hi, Doctor. We’re back then?”

Clara nodded. “You went to Gallifrey? During the war?”

“Yeah. Leela, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bring us all the way here --”

“It is alright. We should go rejoin the others; they will want to know you are safe.”

Rose nodded and unsteadily climbed to her feet, holding onto Clara for support.

“Ow,” Rose suddenly muttered, stumbling a bit.

“What’s wrong?” Clara’s eyes widened and she paused, Rose still leaning on her shoulder.

“No, it’s fine, I just, I hit my arm or something when I fell. I’m okay.”

“Are you sure?”

The other woman smiled. “Yeah, I’m a bit more worried about the whole ‘I-keep-blacking-out’ thing rather than where I happen to fall when I _do_ black out.”

She laughed softly. Leela led the way out of the Tardis, the Doctor fairly close behind, and Clara walking with Rose. “Who are they?” Clara asked her quietly.

“Romana’s a Time Lord but Leela’s human, I think,” she replied. “Romana used to be President of Gallifrey before the war, and then the other Time Lords resurrected somebody named Rassilon. I met him, he’s kind of awful. And they both know the Doctor. Beyond that…” Rose shrugged.

“I’m glad you’re back,” Clara said with a quiet smile.

“Me too.” Rose leaned closer for a moment despite being mostly able to walk on her own now, and then pulled away, keeping her hand linked with Clara’s. Clara felt like she could barely breathe, and followed Rose through the crashed Tardis in a bit of a daze. She was going to have to do _something_ to keep from acting like this any time she got within a meter of the other woman, Clara realized with a shake of her head. Not as easy as it sounds.

“Alright,” Romana was saying as they left the ship. “Narvin, your turn. You too, Doctor. Where _were_ you? Bad Wolf got you here, yes, but what happened? Rassilon’s hunting for you, you know.”

“Romana, there’s another Doctor!” Leela exclaimed, and she spun around in surprise.

“What?”

“Hello, Romana,” Clara’s Doctor said. Romana stared at him in shock before smiling wryly. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised about the bowtie after the rainbow coat, honestly. You’re Rose’s Doctor, then? From this timeline?”

He nodded. “Romana, what happened? I don’t remember anything from, well, I think from where _he_ got pulled out of time.” He nodded in the direction of the younger Doctor. “Rassilon never told me what…”

“He imprisoned me,” she explained curtly. “The chapters supported him - how could they not, when he’s the one they thought could save them from the war?” The Time Lady rolled her eyes. “Idiots, the lot of them. Now, I think the most important question here, Doctor, is what happened to _you.”_ She turned slightly to address both Doctors. “So, the older one has a mental block between when Bad Wolf took you and… when?”

Clara had slowly walked around to where most of the others were standing, Rose beside her. Even Donna seemed to be focusing on Romana, and the whole group was quiet. The Time Lady had an aura of authority; she seemed like someone who could actually cut through the issues here and _deal_ with it. Martha, Mickey, and Donna were standing nearest to Clara and Rose, Jenny and Vastra on their other side. Narvin couldn’t seem to stand still, but never got more than a few meters away from Romana. Leela stood near the Gallifreyan President as well, as if by habit. The Doctors had met up in the center of the group.

Clara’s Doctor hesitated before answering. “Until I regenerated, after the war. And I really, _really_ can’t tell you more than that. We’re already far too close to a dangerous paradox.”

Rose frowned in worry. “I didn’t know you lost your memory of the war.”

“It’s enough to know what happened,” he muttered.

“If I met my older self,” the younger Doctor said, “it would make sense that I lost all recollection of these events after the timelines reset. What’s the last thing you remember from, well, me?”

“I was debating with Narvin whether to return to the Citadel or to my Tardis, I think.”

“So now we’re back to that,” Romana said. “Narvin, _what happened?_ Even Brax lost contact with anyone who knew where you were, after a while.”

Narvin sighed. “Alright, _fine.”_ He stepped forward slightly. “When Rassilon took power, I did everything I could to convince him I would support him. He believed me; I’d always been loyal to Gallifrey first and that’s the stance the older Chapters were taking.” He stood with his arms crossed. “I did what I had to, you needed someone on the outside.”

Romana smiled. “We know, Narvin. I wasn’t upset when I heard you hadn’t been taken; I knew you were doing what you could.”

“It was smart,” Leela said grudgingly. “Besides, Rassilon would have killed you outright if you did not follow him. When you seemed to have gone away, I thought maybe…”

Narvin sighed. “That disappearance was _his_ fault,” he muttered, gesturing to the Doctor. “I was still Coordinator of the CIA, so Rassilon sent me to deal with him when, ah….”

“CIA?” Clara asked in a hushed whisper.

“Celestial Intervention Agency, I think,” Rose replied.

“Rassilon found out that the Daleks had a base in the Tantalus Eye,” the younger Doctor took over the story. “He planned to detonate the Tear of Isha and wipe them out. It would have destroyed countless inhabited worlds in countless systems in the process.”

“It _did_ destroy countless worlds,” Narvin said quietly. “Rassilon lied to me; he told me that someone was trying to sabotage a mission that could be the turning point of the war, but it was only when I met the Doctor that I found out about the collateral damage. I realized that this was why I had stayed in the CIA this long anyway, to stop Rassilon if he tried something like this. The Doctor convinced me to help him.”

“We tried to stop Rassilon from deploying the Tear,” said the Doctor, “but it was too late. He burned a hundred civilizations to stop the Daleks, and it didn’t even work. He destroyed _those_ Daleks, yes, but there are billions more, scattered around the universe throughout all of history. Their leader, their main base - that’s never going to stop them for long.”

“The war still tears the universe apart,” Narvin muttered. “Before long it’s Gallifrey that will burn. Rassilon’s only led us to disaster. He’s making us as bad as the Daleks.”

Silence hung over the yard for a minute. “When we left,” Romana said eventually, quietly, “the Daleks were invading the Citadel.”

“And the Time Lords were still worrying about fighting amongst themselves,” Rose broke in. “Look, we have to _do_ something!”

“There’s nothing we _can_ do, Rose,” said the older Doctor, and his voice was so full of anger and bitterness that Clara stepped back a pace. “The war is _over_ for me, for all of us. And look, the rest of you, the universe is safe, you can see that, but you _have_ to go back. You can’t learn what happens until it does and you _can’t_ change it.”

“There’s no choice,” the younger Doctor said, and Clara felt a shiver of foreboding as his eyes met those of his older self in a look of resignation. “I know what I have to do. I decided the moment I saw the Tantalus Eye explode in the fire of a hundred stars.”

 

 


	17. Chapter 17

“No!”

A voice rang out into the still air and Leela stalked forward to the center of the rough circle. “Listen to yourselves, Time Lords. This war is not over! You cannot just _give up_ , and say there is nothing to be done. We will return, yes, but to _fight_ , not to take an easy way out!”

She looked around the group and sighed in exasperation. “Gallifrey is my home too,” she hissed. “And if you won’t fight, Doctor, than I will!”

“I never said I was giving up,” the younger Doctor said with thinly-concealed anger. “But there’s only one way _left_ to fight, and it’s my responsibility. Not yours. And not yours either, Romana,” he added, with a glare to the Time Lady.

Romana matched his tone. “If you’re considering what I think you --”

“There’s no ‘considering,’” Clara’s Doctor said. “It’s already _done_ for me. He knows that. And yes, Romana, it’s the only way to stop the war!”

Leela glanced back and forth between the Gallifreyans. “I do not know what this final option is, or what it could be, but _stopping_ the war is not the same thing as _winning_ the war.”

“Oi!”

Donna broke her silence and Clara widened her eyes as the ginger woman strode into the circle to stand next to Leela. “Both of you Doctors are just jumping around the issue with your timelines and vague portents of doom, but why don’t you just _say it?”_

“Donna --”

 _“No,_ Doctor, they’ve got a right to know what exactly you did! Or, or will do, or _whatever_. Romana, Narvin, Leela - he destroys your planet. Wipes the whole thing off the face of the universe in order to destroy the Daleks right along with it.”

Silence. Clara held her breath, sure that some sort of paradox - or just the Doctor’s anger - was about to erupt, but even the wind seemed to have stopped.

“And it was _right,”_ Donna continued into the stillness. “I don’t blame him. I don’t think anyone does. He stopped the war. But Leela’s right too!”

She slowly turned, looking at every one of them. “Don’t you see, Doctor? This is why Bad Wolf is here. This is why she found all of us, to change history, to fix the war. And we can’t just give that up! Rose gave you - all of you - a second chance!” Donna laughed. “She probably got _me_ so I could talk some sense into you lot. Bloody hell, Time Lords can be so _dramatic.”_

“She’s right,” Clara said, her words echoing. “Doctor, don’t you see?” She was smiling despite herself, because Donna was _right_. “I know you regret what you had to do,” she said, speaking directly to _her_ Doctor. “I know you didn’t have a choice. And I also know that you’d change it if you could.” She spoke gently, and turned her head slightly toward the younger one. “And you still _can.”_

Rose reached out and took her hand, and Clara felt warmth spread from that point of contact. “I think…” Rose’s voice was hesitant, but clear. “I think Bad Wolf wanted this. It brought us all together - _I_ brought _you_ all together, because there’s a way to change the war. Because… because somehow, that’s how the timeline is _supposed_ to be.” She shrank back a little as everyone turned to look at her. “I don’t really know why, or how to explain it. But things are supposed to be a certain way, and Bad Wolf knows that. That’s ‘why now,’ that’s ‘why us.’”

The younger Doctor took a deep breath. “Alright,” he said eventually. “But there’s still a question of what exactly we’re supposed to _do.”_

“Hold on, wait,” Narvin interrupted. “Can we please get back to the fact that he was planning to _destroy Gallifrey?”_

“Not now, Penguin Boy,” Donna muttered, and before Narvin could object, Romana raised her voice so she could be heard by everyone. “We return to Gallifrey then,” she said. “Leela, Narvin… Doctors?”

Both nodded, and Clara felt a rush of relief.

“And Rose,” Romana added.

“And me,” she confirmed.

“Anyone else? This is not your battle, but anyone who wishes to help is welcome.”

“I’m going,” Clara announced. There was no way in hell she’d stay out of this.

Vastra turned back to the group from where she’d been speaking quietly with Jenny. “We shall go as well. Strax can keep an eye on things here.”

“We’re going too,” said Martha, and Mickey nodded.

Donna grinned. “Well I’m certainly not letting you go off where I can’t keep track of you,” she said to the Doctor.

The older Doctor slowly looked around the circle. “I… I can’t ask you all to go into the Time War, it’s too dangerous, I can’t --”

“You need us,” Vastra said. “We’re here for a reason and we can _help.”_

Rose slowly walked toward the Doctor, Clara pulled with her through their joined hands. “This is what’s meant to be,” she said with a calm smile, Bad Wolf flaring in her eyes.

“Alright,” said Romana. “We have two Tardises, mine and the Doctor’s. Rose, do you think you can send both of us back?”

She nodded. “I think so.”

“We should split up then. Narvin, Leela, you’re with me. Rose, go with the older Doctor; younger one, stay with us. Everyone else, choose a Tardis. We’ll meet up once we’re through the barriers.”

Everyone scattered amongst faint murmuring, either following Clara’s Doctor back toward the house or heading for the crashed ship. Rose’s hand tightened. “Stay with me?” she asked quietly.

“Yeah,” Clara answered with a smile, her breath catching as Rose met her eyes. The other woman grinned and pulled her along toward the house.

As she entered the Tardis, Clara stopped to look at the Doctor. He seemed tired, older than she’d ever known him. He mustered a faint smile when he caught sight of her, and she reached out to hug him. “We’ll get through this,” she said quietly.

He nodded slowly. She pulled back and made sure he was looking right at her. “Trust me,” she said.

“Okay,” he said, and she grinned as he straightened his bowtie.

She walked up the spiral staircase and looked out over the rest of the Tardis. Rose was already up on the glass balcony near the time rotor. Donna, Martha, and Mickey had followed them as well, leaving Vastra and Jenny with Romana’s group. “So, what now?”

“We wait for them to dematerialize first,” the Doctor said, “since they, well, crashed. It might take a bit of effort to get their Tardis flying again. And then, I suppose…” he glanced at Rose.

“Once we’re both in the Vortex,” she said, “I can send us back.”

A screen flickered to life on the console. “Oops,” muttered the Doctor, who then ran for the spiral staircase. Clara was left staring at the screen, which blinked on to show Romana, at the console of her own Tardis. “We’re ready,” she said, and Clara nodded. “It turns out we can still dematerialize from here,” the Time Lady added; “nothing vital was damaged.”

“Alright then!” said the Doctor, who skidded around the corner to step into view of the screen. “We dematerialize to the Vortex together? Then Rose can send us past the barriers at the same time.” She nodded in acknowledgement, and the screen went dark again.

“Everybody hold on,” the Doctor muttered as he adjusted the controls. “I’m not really sure what’s about to happen, so, um. Hang on to something, I guess?”

Clara nervously grabbed onto the railing behind her while Rose leaned against the console, the air around her hands beginning to hum with golden light. The other three had elected to stay on ground level, which Clara was beginning to think would have been a good idea.

The Tardis whined as the rotor started moving up and down, the Doctor having sent them into flight. He stepped back, taking hold of a railing on the other side, and nodded to Rose. The blonde woman took a deep breath, and closed her eyes.

The energy inside the whirring time rotor turned a brilliant yellow, and Clara reflexively looked away from the brightness. The light burned and twisted in spirals all around the room, and Rose stood as still as a statue in the middle of it all, eyes open again but showing only molten gold. The light condensed around the console for a moment, and then blasted outward, knocking Clara and the Doctor to the ground and sending the other three below them diving for cover. Clara almost expected to hear shattering glass, but the Tardis seemed able to withstand Bad Wolf; the walls absorbed the energy, and as the light faded, a residual golden shimmer played across the surface of the entire room.

Rose gasped and started to fall, and Clara rushed forward to catch her, leaning back against the time rotor with the other woman sprawled, oblivious to the world, in her arms. “Rose?” she murmured, and got no response, the only comfort being a steady pulse and the rise and fall of her breathing. She turned to the Doctor, who was inspecting various controls on the console. “Did it work?”

“I’m not sure,” he said, “The readings I’m getting don’t make sense. Which, I suppose, _would_ make sense, considering that we might have just flown into a time lock.” He frowned, and hit another series of buttons. “Romana, Doctor, can you hear me?”

A screen flickered a bit, and the Doctor twisted a few dials as the picture drifted into focus.

“Doctor?” came the response, and through another haze of smoke Clara could just see the blonde Time Lady. “We’re here, wherever here is. I don’t think my Tardis likes those portals very much.” She waved smoke away from her face, and the younger Doctor poked his head into the frame with a cough. “Did it work?” he asked.

Clara’s Doctor sighed. “I think so, but my sensors don’t know what to make of it. What about you? You’re naturally from this time continuum.”

Romana hit a few controls on her side. “I think we’re back,” she said. “We’re just out of orbital range. I don’t see you anywhere, though…”

“Could Bad Wolf have brought the two of us to different places?” Martha asked, emerging from the top of the staircase.

“There’s a possibility,” the older Doctor said. “I think we’ve _landed_ , which doesn’t really make sense.”

Romana frowned. “I hope you’re not right in the middle of the Capitol.”

“Me too,” the Doctor muttered. “We’re going to go investigate, and see if we can meet up with you later. Good luck.” he twisted a dial again and the transmission fizzled out.

Down below, Mickey crossed to the doors. “Should I…?”

The Doctor nodded. “Go ahead, but don’t actually step outside yet. I can’t tell what’s out there.”

Mickey raised the small, futuristic gun he was carrying - probably from some planet they visited, Clara figured, and cracked the door open.

In the ensuing silence, everyone relaxed a bit. “I don’t see much,” he said. “But wherever we are seems pretty empty. It’s outside somewhere. I gotta say, the sky here’s a bit… unsettling. It’s red.”

“That’d be the transduction barriers,” said the Doctor, dashing back down the spiral staircase with Martha right behind. “They were increased beyond what anyone knew they could be during the war; created the sky trenches.”

“So we _are_ on Gallifrey then,” Clara called down to them. The Doctor peered outside.

“Yeah, we are.”

Rose stirred slightly and Clara looked down. “Rose? Can you hear me?”

“Mmhhm. What happened?” She opened her eyes and smiled slightly. “Did it work?”

“Yep. We landed on Gallifrey - Romana’s Tardis made it through too, but they’re in orbit.”

Clara helped her to her feet and they both looked out at the reddish glow they could see through the Tardis doors. Rose stumbled and leaned against her; Clara looked at her worriedly as the blonde woman raised a hand to her temples.

“Sorry. Headache, I think,” she mumbled as she stepped away, standing up straight with support of the glass railing. “It’s going away now.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be activating Bad Wolf so often,” Clara offered. “I mean, beyond what can’t be controlled, maybe we should tell the Doctor that you shouldn’t be using those powers unless absolutely necessary. That was longer, I’m pretty sure. It’s been getting longer each time until you’re better, it seems like.”

“It was probably just that getting through the Time Lock requires more energy than everything else. I’ll be fine.”

“Alright, if you’re sure.” Clara took her hand as they headed toward the spiral staircase and Rose intertwined her fingers with hers.

They joined the crowd around the door, and the Doctor took a deep breath and stepped outside. “Gallifrey,” Clara heard him murmur, and she quickly slipped through the doors to stand next to him.

The view was breathtaking and frightening. Deep red clouds obscured the sky, which must have been the sky trenches the Doctor mentioned. Clara gasped as a glint of light shimmered across the trees near the horizon; silver leaves flashed with reflected gold fire. The ground was sparse nearby; mostly dark rock and dull sand. A few large scrapes marked the dirt, imprints of weapons scorched into the stone. She walked forward, stepping cautiously around the Doctor, who was still taking in the world that was once his home. Glancing around the back of the Tardis, Clara almost forgot how to breathe. An enormous glass dome stretched across the sky off in the distance, illuminated like the trees with solar fire from the sky and the haze of warm light from the city inside the dome. Tall spires, larger than anything she’d ever seen on Earth, twisted up and about in proud spikes of silver and scarlet. The Time War was evident even there, and Clara felt a jolt of adrenaline as she realized that part of the glass had fallen away, shattered; she could tell even from far away that some of the spires were bent or smashed.

“The Daleks,” she muttered. “They’ve been here already. Or there, at the city…”

The Doctor frowned. “That’s the Capitol. If there’s damage there… we don’t have much time. Arcadia’s already fallen.”


	18. Chapter 18

Rose hung back to watch the Doctor - she was worried about him, being back here on Gallifrey during the war. “So, what now?” she asked.

The Doctor sighed. “I need to make some measurements to figure out where and when exactly we are, so we can meet up with Romana and the others, with our Tardis’s systems not working properly.” He held up the sonic. “I need to activate this at a few different points far from the Tardis, which is set up to receive the signals, and then I can use the console to pinpoint our coordinates.”

Rose pulled her own sonic screwdriver out of her pocket, the one her other Doctor had made for her. “Would this help?” she asked. “If you give me the program too, we’ll get it done in half the time.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s brilliant!” He aimed his own sonic at her and with a buzz, hers flickered, a notification blinking on the side. The interface was still mostly telepathic, but as a human, her own screwdriver needed a few adjustments to be as functional for her as the Doctor’s was.

“Okay, I’ve got the program,” she said. “So, what do I do?”

“We’ll split up,” the Doctor said. “I’ll go straight that way -” he pointed to the left of the domed city - “and you go in the opposite direction. Walk for about ten minutes, activate the sonic, and come right back. We’ll meet up again and then go make the last two measurements.”

“Alright, we have a plan!” Martha said. “I’ll go with Rose - Mickey--?”

“And I’ll stay with the Doctor.” He raised his, for lack of a better word, ray gun, and added - “Looks like we’re the only two with weapons, and with Daleks around, we probably should split up with the group.”

“I’ll go with Rose’s group too,” Clara said, and Rose smiled.

“I’m with the Doctor then,” Donna said. “Make it even.”

“Okay, see you all in about twenty minutes then,” the Doctor said. “If you see any Daleks, activate your sonic and come straight back here. Same goes for Time Lords - most of them are on Rassilon’s side, whether brainwashed or not, and I don’t know what they’ll do if they find us.”

Rose nodded. Something droned overhead and they all looked up, frozen in silence as a small Dalek saucer shimmered into view, speeding by toward the Citadel, luckily too intent on its mission to notice them. “We should hurry,” Rose murmured, and everyone nodded.

………………………

Seven minutes after they started walking, Rose, Clara, and Martha passed a wrecked ship. It didn’t seem to be Dalek in origin, and they realized it must have been a Gallifreyan craft that was shot down and forgotten about by the Dalek forces. Martha approached it to investigate, but backed up as soon as she looked inside. “Let’s just keep moving,” she murmured. Clara, eyes wide, followed, but Rose lingered for a moment, drawn to the stillness that hovered over the crashed ship.

She stepped forward slowly, and reached out a hand to the ship’s metal casing. There was a window on the side, probably where the pilot typically sat. It was clouded and cracked, but there was enough space left to see. Rose peered inside - it took her eyes a moment to adjust, but her breath caught as she realized that a Time Lord was sitting there, almost unrecognizable from dried blood and scorched material. Their head was bent at an unnatural angle, and Rose shivered as she backed away and jogged to catch up with the others. She wished she hadn’t stopped.

On the way back, she walked on the other side of the group, trying to ignore the silence that seemed to hang over the wreck, beckoning her to watch, to stay.

………………………

The Doctor sent them in opposite directions once again. Rose took the path toward the Citadel, the city far enough away that even after a few minutes of walking it didn’t appear any closer - still the same enormous glass dome on the horizon, fractured and smoking. She wasn’t sure how much time any of them had left, but since there wasn’t any clear sign of ongoing battle, she guessed that maybe the Daleks had sent a smaller force in to test the city’s defenses, and the final battle was still to come.

Suddenly, Martha stopped and threw an arm out in front of them. “Wait,” she muttered. “I think - wait here for a moment.”

Rose crouched and glanced over at Clara, who had ducked back behind a rock. Martha scrambled up the ridge in front of them, ducking low to glance over the top. She pulled back with a gasp. “Daleks!” she hissed back at them.

“We need to go back!” said Clara, her voice urgent but barely more than a whisper. Rose fumbled for the sonic. “I think we’re far enough that this’ll work,” she murmured. She buzzed the sonic quickly, wincing at the noise that seemed a whole lot louder than normal given that they were trying to avoid, well, death.

“Let’s go,” said Martha, sliding down the ridge to join them. Rose could hear the Daleks now too, not approaching at anything faster that what would probably pass for the Daleks’ version of a leisurely stroll, but definitely heading in their direction. The three of them took off back the way they’d come from, slightly limited by the fact that they were trying to run _quietly_ , but Rose knew that as soon as the Daleks got over the ridge they’d spot them, given the rather limited landscape. And sure enough, the sounds abruptly became clearer, accompanied by a sudden flurry of “EXTERMINATE. _EXTERMINAAATE.”_

Rose squeaked as the first shot landed right in the middle of their group. Martha dived behind a rock and came up firing, but the gun that had blown a Cyberman into pieces only seemed to annoy the Dalek that it hit.

“Oh _crap,”_ Clara muttered, grabbing Rose’s hand and pulling her out of the way of the next blast.

_We’re not going to make it._

Rose felt like all the air had been knocked out of her as she realized the Tardis was still too far away to reach before the Daleks landed a shot or two. If the Doctor got his signal and made it back, then he could fly the ship again and come find them even if they couldn’t make it back on their own, but there was a good chance he wouldn’t even know what was happening.

“Guys, run!” she shouted to Clara and Martha. “Bad Wolf can hold them off until you can get back to the Doctor and the Tardis, and then you can come get me. But if I don’t do something, none of us will make it!”

Martha glanced at the Daleks, her useless weapon, and back to Rose. “Alright,” she decided with an abrupt nod. “We’ll be back as soon as we can. Clara, run!”

“But--”

“There’s no time! Rose is right - she’ll be fine, Bad Wolf can handle them and the sooner we get back, the sooner we can bring the Tardis and the Doctor.” Martha dashed out from behind the rock, dodging a shot from the Daleks who had almost reached them.

“THE DOCTOR IS HERE,” said one of the Daleks. “THE DOCTOR WILL BE EXTERMINATED.”

“The Doctor’s not the only one who’s here,” Rose muttered, stepping out of cover as Bad Wolf started humming around her. “Remember me, Daleks?”

The gold light arced in front of her in a shield, alternately deflecting and absorbing the Daleks’ attack. “Well, I suppose you wouldn’t - not yet, anyway. You will, though. I kill your Emperor, you know.”

_“EXTERMINATE.”_

Rose’s eyes widened as one of the Dalek’s blasts knocked her backwards, ricocheting off the shield. The glow faltered, and Rose frantically sent Bad Wolf flaring outward in a panic before the Daleks could get through. Her breathing sped up, the light energy starting to pulse out of control.

“Rose, look out!”

She spun around and saw Clara --

\-- Clara, who hadn’t run, or had turned back when the Daleks had gotten closer, because oh no --

\-- surrounded, Rose was surrounded, they had circled around behind when she didn’t see, and she sent the shield spinning in a sphere all around her as the gold fire grew and shimmered --

\-- as one of the Daleks’ shots whizzed by half a meter from her head before she could fix the barrier --

\-- and then Bad Wolf took over. Rose couldn’t see anything beyond the gold light and the Daleks kept shouting _EXTERMINATE, EXTERMINATE_ and she cried out “Clara, _run!”_ She could barely hear herself and panic built until the brilliant gold energy exploded outward in a nova of light.

And then the Daleks were screaming, and it was a sound she knew would be permanently etched in her memory, the burning Daleks blasted apart in a fire worse than their own, mechanical shrieking that sounded like it came from hell itself.

And then silence.

Fire crackling from the remains of Dalek casings, the stillness of the air, silent voids and fractures in the fabric of space around her. Rose heard her own breathing then, a ragged gasp of air first, evening out as her vision faded back to normal, the gold glow dissipating.

_Clara?_

She knew she didn’t have much time before she passed out again, only moments after the light would fade completely. She tried to keep Bad Wolf active, to hang on until she could see the other woman. Clara must have seen her fall, realized the Daleks had trapped her, wanted to warn her. Saved her. But she hadn’t gotten out in time, Rose started to realize with a sense of dreadful certainty.

There was a good chance that Bad Wolf hadn’t hurt her; it tended to only target those it knew were enemies. But the Daleks themselves had been shattered, strewn about the general area, as dangerous as any grenade or explosion. “Clara?” she managed to gasp into the silence.

_No no no no no--_

And for the second time in her life, Rose felt like something had extinguished the sun above her, done something irreparable to time itself and sent the world spinning into an abyss of shattered nothingness. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t think - Clara was gone, and it was like the Doctor had been killed in front of her all over again, and in the midst of all of this Rose had one clear thought, that somehow, without even realizing it, she’d fallen in love with Clara Oswald.

“Rose?” The voice was quiet, ragged.

Off to her left - it took Rose a second to see, to process - _Clara._ She was there. Not dead. Standing five meters away, pulling herself up from where she’d fallen behind an exploded-Dalek-created ledge.

They ran - or, as much as they could run - to meet each other, Rose starting to stumble as she couldn’t hold on to the glow of Bad Wolf any longer.

“I… you’re safe?”

“Had to come back,” she murmured, smiling despite everything. “You needed help.”

Rose couldn’t think of the words, but she didn’t have to, and in a sudden impulse she raised both hands to Clara’s face and kissed her.

Clara gasped softly and leaned in closer. A breath in a heartbeat, an echo like a prayer that passed between them, her name on the tip of her tongue. Rose pulled back in a daze, Bad Wolf gone and darkness clouding her mind, and the last thing she felt before she collapsed was Clara holding on to her as she fell -- “The Tardis will be here soon, I’ll be right here, I promise…”


	19. Chapter 19

When Rose opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was the pulsing glow of the Tardis’s time rotor. The room was bright, warm, quiet. After a moment, she realized she was leaning back on a bench or chair or, well, something, next to the railing on the upper level of the console room. Movement caught the corner of her eye and she turned to see the Doctor - the older one, the one they knew - fiddling with the controls on the console.

“It worked?” she murmured.

He jumped slightly. “Oh, you’re awake! Yep, it worked. We can navigate now. We’re in orbit next to Romana’s Tardis; they’ve got this cloaking shield thing that’s enough to hide us with everybody focused in the surface anyway. Are you alright?” He frowned. “That was definitely longer than normal.”

“I think I’m fine,” she murmured, stumbling to her feet. A dull pain echoed in the back of her head, but it was fading. It had been getting worse though, like he said. Rose resolved to keep her mouth shut about it - they all had too much to worry about right now. “Where’s Clara?”

“...Ah. Um. She’s alright. Everybody’s alright. Martha found me and told me about the Daleks and we materialized the Tardis around both of you.”

Rose narrowed her eyes. _“Where’s Clara?”_

“You know, Romana needs to talk to you when you get the chance; she wants to ask you about the Daleks.”

_“Doctor.”_

“...Right. Yes. Clara’s in the medical bay.”

“Wait, what?”

“Like I said, she’s fine! Really. Just, Dalek debris and stuff. Martha’s helping.”

Rose glared at the Doctor and headed for the door to the rest of the Tardis.

“You probably… _shouldn’t,_ yet,” he said. “Just wait for them out here; Romana’s joining us too in a minute --”

“I’ll see you in a bit, Doctor!” Rose called back, ignoring him, and the door slid shut behind her.

_Now what?_

Rose had no idea where the medbay was in the Tardis’s new layout. She reached a hand out to the wall. “Any chance you could help me out here?”

The Tardis hummed, the hallway lights flickering a bit before a trail of light appeared along the ceiling. Rose grinned. “Thanks!”

Intent on following the Tardis’s directions, Rose almost walked right into Martha as a door slid closed behind the other woman.

“Oh! Sorry.”

Martha smiled. “Good, you’re awake. Thanks for what you did with the Daleks - I’m pretty sure you saved our lives.”

Rose shrugged. “And now we’re one step closer to fixing this whole Time War problem - anyway, thanks for getting us back to the Tardis. Or, well, getting the Tardis to us. ...Is Clara really alright? The Doctor tried to hold me off…”

“She’s okay. Honestly, I think she was more worried about you than about herself, even though she’s the one who got hit by a flying Dalek.” Martha rolled her eyes, but her voice was gentle. “Really though, she’s alright. I think the Doctor just wanted to make sure I wouldn’t get interrupted; some of the equipment in the medical bay is really sensitive.”

“Thanks.” Rose smiled, and so did Martha. “Can I…?”

“Yeah, go ahead in. She just has to stay there for another five minutes to give the restructuring unit time to finish. I’ll go check in with the Doctor.” Rose’s heart skipped as she looked at the door, her hand hovering over the input panel. Martha smiled, her voice quiet. “She’s fine, really. I promise.”

Rose blushed slightly as the other woman left. Martha knew, didn’t she? Oh god. Even she didn’t know until now. Was she really that obvious? Rose sighed and pressed the input panel, and the door slid open.

She stepped inside the medbay and took a moment to adjust to all the distractions in the room - it wasn’t very large, but it was filled with all sorts of screens and desks and jars of who-knows-what. Clara looked up from a chair on the left side of the room as Rose entered, and smiled. “Hey,” she said quietly. “Are you alright? I didn’t just want to leave you there while you were still unconscious...”

“Me?” Rose asked. “What about you? What happened?” she walked over to her, stepping around some sort of wire coiled in the middle of the floor. Clara’s jumper was ripped at one shoulder, dark red staining the edges, and some sort of small machine hummed above her skin, periodically flashing a soothing blue light.

“I’m okay. Part of a Dalek hit me before I could get to cover, but the technology here is amazing. It’s basically healed; I just need to sit here until this thing stops. The Doctor told Martha how all the equipment worked so he could keep fixing the Tardis - I didn’t know she was a doctor! That must be useful, with her and Mickey running all over the universe.”

Rose frowned. “You shouldn’t have come back for me - this is my fault; I can’t control Bad Wolf when these things happen and you could’ve--”

Clara reached out quickly with her free hand and put a finger against Rose’s lips. “Nope,” she said. “I’m gonna stop you right there. If I didn’t go back, you would’ve gotten caught unawares and then where would we be? You needed my help.” She smiled and pulled her hand away. “I’ll always go back for you,” she said quietly.

Rose’s breath caught as their eyes met. “So, uh… about the other thing…” she stammered.

Clara blushed. “Right. About that.”

“I, um. I had kind of thought you were dead and I was about twenty seconds from blacking out so if you’re not --”

Clara reached up before Rose could react and pulled her closer, pressing their lips together, and any remaining thoughts in Rose’s mind evaporated. The device attached to Clara’s shoulder beeped a few times in objection to being moved, and they both laughed slightly as they separated.

“...Oh.”

“So, um. If you meant it, back when…”

“Yeah.” Their eyes locked again, and this time they both leaned in. Clara’s lips brushed hers gently, her free hand resting on Rose’s jawline. “Clara,” she started to whisper, but trailed off as the other woman traced her tongue along Rose’s lower lip. Rose’s eyes fluttered closed and she leaned closer, one arm supporting her above the chair and her other hand tangled in Clara’s hair. For a moment she forgot the fear and uncertainty surrounding them and let herself get caught up in the warmth spreading through her, the feeling of Clara’s lips soft against hers as the kiss deepened.

A familiar pulse of energy sparked to life and Rose drew back, willing Bad Wolf’s light to fade as her eyes shimmered gold. “Sorry,” she breathed. “I… Bad Wolf. I probably shouldn’t.”

“It’s okay,” Clara murmured. She pulled her hand back, fingertips trailing along Rose’s skin. “I never thought…”

“You were gone, and - and you couldn’t be,” said Rose. “I didn’t realize - I’ve never loved a girl before, and…”

Clara’s crooked smile was probably the most adorable thing she’d ever seen. “I did, once - and I do now.”

Rose sighed and leaned forward again so that their foreheads touched. “I love you, Clara Oswald.”

“And I love you, Rose Tyler.”

Some sort of bubbly happiness kept Rose grinning like an idiot. God, they were in the medical bay in the Tardis in orbit around Gallifrey with the fate of the planet and the Time War and the Doctor and the universe probably about to be decided within the next day or so, and she couldn’t really think about anything other than the fact that she loved Clara and the other woman loved her back.

“I just…” Rose hesitated. “After the Doctor, I didn’t really think about this. I didn’t want to move on and I didn’t think I could. But it’s not like that, not really. And I need you. You’re always there when…”

“And I always will be,” she murmured, and Rose was leaning in to kiss her again, Bad Wolf be damned, when the device on Clara’s shoulder flashed blue and detached with a whirr. They both sat up, watching as it hummed and folded back in on itself to rest on the table nearby.

“I guess that means I’m healed then,” Clara said nervously, trying to turn around to look at her shoulder. “I should probably go change; we can’t really fix a Dalek-induced hole in my jumper.”

The patch of skin that had been hidden by the machine was fully healed, but a twisted scar began at Clara’s collarbone and spiraled down over her shoulder onto her back. Rose drew a sharp breath and looked up at her, guilt tangling up inside. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

Clara held Rose’s face in her hands. “This is _not_ your fault,” she said. “And I’d risk it again.” She tilted her head up and kissed Rose’s forehead before climbing carefully out of the chair. “I’m going to go change and I’ll meet you and the Doctor in the console room in a bit. Donna went over to Romana’s ship earlier; I think Martha was planning to also. We’ll probably all end up going over there to discuss our next move, they’ve got holographic tables and stuff.” She waved her hands at the screens in the medbay.

Rose nodded, smiling. “Okay. I’ll see how the Doctor’s doing, make sure he knows you’re alright.”

“I wonder how long it’s going to take him to figure this out?”

They both giggled as they parted in the hallway, and Rose leaned back against a wall as she turned a corner out of sight.

In love with Clara Oswald. This was new. She smiled again, a bittersweet pang in her heart as she thought of the Doctor. Fate was never what she expected, but she knew in her soul that this was right.

Now they just had to make it through the Time War.


	20. Chapter 20

Romana’s Tardis seemed a whole lot bigger now that it wasn’t, well, filled with smoke and half-falling-apart. Clara spotted a floating screen by the wall and watched, transfixed, as a complicated system of circles and swirls spiraled and changed and evaporated in white light across the shimmering field of what looked like a galaxy. The transmat beam had materialized her, Rose, the Doctor, and Romana on the far end of the expansive console room, and she trailed behind a bit as they walked over to meet the others, who were gathered around a large table near the time rotor.

Romana had been waiting in the Doctor’s console room with Rose when Clara finally got back there, wearing a dress and jacket she’d found in the Tardis’s wardrobe. The Time Lady had explained that they could all get to her Tardis and back via transmat, and the Doctor’s time ship would stay locked in her cloaking force field. So here they were, gathering to decide what to do about Gallifrey’s Dalek problem.

The Tardis itself seemed cleaner and brighter, more formal than the Doctor’s, even after the recent redesign of his console room. It was clearly set up to be flown by more than one person, with the central console and time rotor supplemented by panels along the walls and in a divided ring around the middle of the room. There were screens along most of the walls, and the table they approached was covered in ever-changing symbols - Gallifreyan writing, Clara realized. Above the table hovered holographic displays, diagrams of the planet as well as the Dalek fleet around it. Clara gasped as she realized that they were almost completely surrounded by Dalek ships.

“Are you sure they won’t find us?” she asked.

The younger Doctor nodded. “They’re all focused on the ground. The Time Lords don’t have any ships left up here; it’s gotten a lot worse since I last saw it.”

“You both had been missing for a while,” Romana said, addressing both him and Narvin. “There’s no way to know how far Bad Wolf might have pulled you out of time, since I haven’t been aware of most of the decisions of either Rassilon or the High Council, but you’ve probably been taken a bit further ahead. We’re even worse off now - I had no idea either.”

“So what are our options?” Martha asked. She was standing next to Mickey and Donna, both of whom had gone through the transmat pretty soon after the two ships had rendezvoused.

“We don’t have many,” said Narvin, across the table from Clara. The four Time Lords, plus Leela, had all gathered on one side. “The Doctor’s original plan, from what I can tell, was to use the Moment --” He swiped his hand across the table and a third image sprang up - a box, covered in intricate designs that swirled in the blue light of the hologram. “It’s the ultimate weapon of mass destruction,” Narvin continued. “It’s so powerful that we think it’s developed a conscience of its own. Even Rassilon hasn’t dared to use it, and he’s taken everything else from the Omega Arsenal.”

“It could easily wipe out the Daleks,” the younger Doctor said, “but it would erase the Time Lords as well. End the war once and for all, and preserve the rest of the universe.”

“So that’s what you did,” Rose murmured, looking to the older Doctor. “You used the Moment to save everyone else.”

He nodded slowly. “After what I saw Rassilon do…”

“So what else?” Donna asked. “What are the other options?”

“Well, there’s the standard ‘fight the Daleks,’ but if we try that, we’ll just get wiped out anyway,” Romana said. “I hate to say it, but if Rassilon’s not managed it yet, there’s no way we’re winning this war if we don’t do something drastic. Which brings us to this --” Romana waved her hand through the Moment hologram and another sprung up from the table to take its place. The new image sparked with a white glow, a circle of energy swirling around in a vortex surrounding a tiny point of nothingness. “This is the Eye of Harmony,” Romana explained. “As close to a three-dimensional representation as we can come up with, anyway. It’s a black hole, locked deep below the Citadel. It’s our power source, the part of Gallifrey that makes us Time Lords. Rassilon harnessed it in the very beginning, when he designed and constructed the first ship with the ability to traverse the Time Vortex. When he created the Time Lords.”

“That’s why everyone supports him, then?” said Martha. “Why they wanted to bring him back, why they wouldn’t take a second look at what he was actually doing.”

Romana nodded. “We were all taught to think of Rassilon as the savior and creator of our people. What we didn’t realize is that he’s more analogous to Davros, the Daleks’ creator, than anything else.”

“Anyway,” continued Narvin, “Without the Eye of Harmony, we wouldn’t have time travel. There’s a small one in every Tardis. It powers the ship and lets us access the Vortex. The original also protects Gallifrey, fueling the transduction barriers.”

“Each Tardis’s Eye of Harmony is created from a small temporal fragment of the original,” said the younger Doctor. “And each is extremely dangerous. The Eye in my Tardis was once almost left open long enough to destroy the Earth, and in some cases the consequences could be far worse.”

Vastra’s eyes widened. _“Oh_ \- you plan to use the Eye of Harmony itself as a weapon against the Daleks!”

“In a way,” Romana answered. “We’re not going to use it to attack the Daleks - that would easily destroy all the Time Lords along with it, just like the Moment but, ah, _messier.”_

“We’re going to open a pocket universe,” said the younger Doctor. “Or try to, at least. If we trap Gallifrey there, time will stay locked around it while the universe moves on. If we time it right, while the Daleks approach on their final assault --”

“-- Gallifrey disappears,” Romana finished, “the Daleks destroy each other without the planet in the way, and it looks to the rest of the universe like the two sides ended in mutual annihilation.”

“The Time War ends,” the older Doctor murmured, “and Gallifrey stays locked in a parallel dimension until we can retrieve it.” A smile started to grow on his face. “That’s _brilliant!”_

“And the Eye of Harmony is enough to power this?” Vastra asked.

“And that’s where we run into problems,” said the younger Doctor.

 _“And,_ that’s where you come in, Doctor,” said Romana, addressing the older one. “The Eye of Harmony by itself still isn’t enough to do this. There’s no power source strong enough, even if we do manage to complete the calculations. But now, we have a Tardis that has been specifically calibrated to interface with its own Eye of Harmony -- a Tardis that is far better equipped to handle that kind of power.”

Rose gasped. “When Bad Wolf was created, that’s what it was, the Time Vortex flowing through the Tardis’s power source, its Eye of Harmony. So, when I came back, and the Tardis adapted --”

“-- it created a balanced connection to the power of the Eye so that it could handle being near Bad Wolf. Exactly.”

“So we can connect my Tardis to Gallifrey’s Eye of Harmony!” the older Doctor said. “It’s the only one that could interface and provide the extra power to open that pocket dimension.”

“We hope,” said Narvin.

“So the question now,” Clara said, “is how exactly we get to the Eye under the Citadel.”

“The Daleks’ll attack soon,” added Jenny. “Which is good, I suppose, since we can’t activate the Eye until the timing is right anyway. But that leaves the problem of how to get your Tardis through a horde of Daleks to get to the Eye in the first place.”

“Not to mention Rassilon’s soldiers,” said Donna.

Leela grinned. “Leave that to us. I will plan with Vastra, Jenny, Mickey, and Martha -- you are all warriors. I know we can find a way through the Daleks.”

“Rose, I’d like to do a few tests on what we discussed earlier,” said Romana. “Doctors, Narvin, you should go over the Doctor’s Tardis, to see if there are any modifications to be made on that end for preparation for integration with Gallifrey’s Eye of Harmony. The calculations for opening the pocket universe are already underway; I’ve connected the processing systems of both Tardises for that.”

Amidst murmurings of assent everyone split off into groups, and Clara heard the whine of the transmat beam. She turned to Rose. “So, what are you and Romana --”

“She had an idea about how to ‘measure’ Bad Wolf,” Rose explained. “To track its power output and maybe try to figure out how to stop me from blacking out each time.”

“Do you really think you could?” Clara asked, surprised. “I thought there was nothing the Doctor could do to about it.”

Rose grinned. “Don’t tell the Doctor I said this, but I’m pretty sure Romana knows a lot more than him about, well, _everything.”_

Clara tried and failed to hold in laughter.

“I mean, even she thinks it’s a bit of a long shot,” Rose continued. “But we can try. If nothing else, maybe we’ll finally have a way of tracking the Bad Wolf energy beyond, like, being able to measure the fact that it’s there. And if we can actually quantify it, maybe that can tell us more about the Eye of Harmony too.”

“Alright, I’ll see you in a bit then!”

“See you,” Rose murmured with a soft smile. Their hands lingered in contact for a moment as Rose pulled away to go find the Time Lady.

Clara sighed and leaned back against the table. She was still kind of in shock about the whole thing. Rose kissing her, and all. Rose was actually in love with her -- she’d never thought that this could actually happen, or that Rose could even like a girl, for that matter. And now they actually had a chance to get through this war. She looked down at the table, at the little holographic Eye of Harmony spinning and pulsing with controlled fire. This was a second chance for all of them, especially the Doctor -- she knew he was still haunted by what he’d been forced to do, and maybe this could lift some of the guilt that had been following him around for centuries like a second shadow.

She was still smiling when Donna approached and leaned against the table next to her, eyes wide. “Wait,” the ginger said, grinning. “Was that -- are you and Rose -- _ohmygod I knew it.”_

…………………………………

Rose followed Romana through the corridors of her Tardis until they reached yet another room covered in screens and equipment that she couldn’t even begin to name. “So, could this tell me why Bad Wolf was dormant for so long?” Rose was asking as the doors slid shut behind them.

“Possibly. I won’t know anything until I see what kind of data I’ll get. This is incredibly advanced technology, developed in the last couple of decades to try to track Dalek fleet movements based on artron energy. They might have something better now, but, well, I wouldn’t know.”

“The war must have led to a lot of new technology that was lost afterwards.”

“And a lot of it should probably stay lost -- even if this plan works, we’ll still have to deal with the aftereffects of the war on Gallifrey as a civilization.”

The Time Lady took a couple of wires connected to the largest device in the room and held them up to Rose’s temples. “I need to attach these - is that alright? Don’t worry, it won’t hurt.”

She nodded, and a moment later felt a slight pressure from the two electrodes, or whatever the time-energy-sensing equivalent was.

“Now, this thing wasn’t originally intended to track artron or huon energy in people, so we’ll see how this goes.”

“Knowing literally anything about this would help,” said Rose, as the machine started humming. “Anything that would help me stop… hurting people.”

“Like Clara?” Romana’s tone was surprisingly soft and Rose looked up at her with wide eyes.

The Time Lady smiled. “I wasn’t there, but I heard what happened when the Doctor brought the Tardis back to both of you. Clara almost punched him when he made her go to the medical bay with Martha instead of staying with you while you were unconscious.”

“Really?”

“She gets hit by part of a Dalek and doesn’t want to leave you even while she’s bleeding on the Tardis floor - if you want my advice, don’t wait until it’s too late for both of you.”

Rose smiled slightly, the sides of her face burning red. “We… may have figured out some things about half an hour ago.”

Romana laughed. “Good - oh, wait, I think I found the Bad Wolf energy.”

She glanced at the screen Romana was studying, but it was unintelligible to her. “Alright,” said the Time Lady, “I need you to activate it -- just a bit, we don’t want to let it out of control, but just for a moment, so I can see how it changes.”

Rose took a deep breath and nervously closed her eyes. Almost immediately, she felt the pull of the gold energy, and she let it flare up for a moment before clamping down on the spark and willing it back to where it lay dormant. She could almost feel it humming under her skin.

Romana was quiet, frozen still in front of the monitor.

“Could you see anything?” Rose asked, trying to ignore the whispers that _something’s wrong, something’s wrong._

“Rose, I’m really sorry,” said Romana, her voice subdued. “I think… Bad Wolf is pulling from your own lifeforce. At some point, the time energy is going to overwhelm you until it drains you completely. Rose, I’m sorry, but Bad Wolf is slowly killing you.”


	21. Chapter 21

“You’re _what?”_ Clara felt something hollow inside, like the floor had dropped out from beneath her feet. “No, no no no we won’t let that happen,” she said in a rush. “Rose, Bad Wolf might be finished anyway - it got us all here, and we have a plan that will work perfectly well on its own.”

“Maybe.” Rose glanced at her nervously, and Clara launched herself forward to hug the other woman like she’d never let go.

“Did you tell the Doctor?” Clara asked.

Rose shook her head. “Romana’s telling him now.”

“We’ll just make sure you don’t have to activate Bad Wolf, and then when this is all over we’ll find a way to get it out of you.” Clara pulled back a bit so she could look up into Rose’s eyes.

“I just found something else to live for,” Rose said with a wry smile. “I can’t…”

“We’ll make it,” Clara murmured. “I promise.”

Rose tilted her head down and their lips met. The kiss was gentle and warm and Clara blinked back tears. She wasn’t going to give in - there was no way she’d let Bad Wolf take her from them.

They were waiting in Romana’s console room - the Time Lady had gone to the Doctor’s Tardis, and Donna had gone to find Leela and the others when one of the screens picked up increased Dalek activity.

Clara leaned back against the table, her fingers intertwined with Rose’s as they both pulled back. Rose actually sat on the table, earning a raised eyebrow from Clara, who figured that sitting on something with a whole lot of holographic moving parts was probably not the best idea. Rose shrugged. “What? It’s Time Lord tech, it can probably stand being used as a chair for a couple minutes.”

Clara tried to hold back laughter and utterly failed, Rose laughing along with her - that is, until the door at the end of the room slid open with a hiss and they both hastily stepped away from the table.

As Donna entered with everyone she’d been looking for, Romana transmatted in as well, bringing the two Doctors and Narvin with her.

“Oh, good, you’re all here,” said the Time Lady. “Leela, we need to move soon if we’re going to be able to do this. Do you --”

“Yes, we have a plan,” Leela said with a grin. “We transmat in to the Omega Arsenal first - wherever you need us, we will have weapons that can kill a Dalek. If you need to get to the Eye, we can be your distraction.”

Romana smiled. “Perfect. I think a distraction is exactly what we’ll need.” She nodded at the younger Doctor.

“The Eye of Harmony is protected by a temporal force field,” he said. “It’s under the Panopticon, but there’s no way to get to it. _Unless_ , we turn the shield off.”

“The controls are in the War Room,” Narvin began.

“Which, unfortunately, is exactly where Rassilon was the last time I saw him,” Romana interrupted. “Which is where the distraction comes in.”

“Romana and I will each stay with our respective Tardises,” the older Doctor explained. “Leela, Vastra, Jenny, Martha, and Mickey will get to the Omega Arsenal and pick up whatever they can find, and then transmat to the Panopticon. Whether it’s Daleks or other Time Lords who become a problem, that’ll at least get Rassilon out of the War Room.”

“Clara, Rose, Donna, you’ll stay with me,” Romana said. “Narvin and the other Doctor will transmat into the War Room once it’s clear, and shut off the shields temporarily. Then, both Tardises can materialize next to the Eye of Harmony.”

“When do we go?” Vastra asked. “Will we be able to communicate?”

“Five microspans,” said Romana. “We don’t want to cut this too close, with the Daleks and all. And I’ll be able to monitor everything from here, and relay information.”

Clara glanced over at Rose. The other woman was staring resolutely at the table; Clara realized that an hour ago she would have insisted on going with them, helping, somehow, but now that Bad Wolf wasn’t an option…

Rose looked up as if sensing her gaze. Her expression softened and she smiled at Clara, her hand tightening its grip on hers, and Clara felt her own breathing relax a bit. They were almost out of this; they had almost made it. And for the Time Lords’ sake, hopefully this plan would work.

“Then we begin,” Leela said. “The final battle.”

Everyone began to separate - Leela briefing the others on what to expect in the Omega Arsenal, Romana stopping to speak with Narvin. Rose leaned closer to Clara. “I’m going to talk to the Doctor about…”

“Yeah.”

Rose smiled slightly as she turned away, her hand lingering in contact for a moment.

Clara, though not intentionally, ended up near the other two Gallifreyans.

“At least you had the sense to stay here,” Narvin was saying to the former President.

Romana rolled her eyes. “Well, _someone_ had to fly the Tardis,” she said, with a hint of amusement. She sighed. “Be careful, Narvin?”

He nodded. “And I’ll keep an eye on the Doctor - whether or not this works, we know he regenerates.”

She smiled. “At least we know he makes it out of this - as will we all, hopefully.”

“Honestly, I’m worried about Leela,” he muttered. “She’s on the front line and she can’t regenerate--”

“Neither can you, unless there’s something I don’t know about.”

He glared at her. “Look, just, you’re in charge up here, of warning them, watching them. Make sure she gets out of this. You know how she is, rushing into danger like--”

“Narvin,” Romana murmured. “I know. And I’ll do my best. To protect _both_ of you.”

“And if the Daleks spot you up here--”

“I _know,”_ Romana said with quiet laughter, earning another annoyed glare that softened when she stepped closer. “You should go meet with the Doctor and make sure both of you know what to look for when you get to the War Room.”

Clara glanced over to see Rose stepping away from both Doctors with a sad smile, reflected on the older Doctor’s face. When she looked back, Narvin was headed in that direction, leaving Romana busy with two of the screens on the wall.

“There’s another Dalek patrol arriving in orbit,” Martha called from the other end of the room.

“Alright,” the Doctor said. “Let’s do this.”

Leela’s group disappeared in a flurry of blue transmat beams. So did both Doctors and Narvin, back to the other Tardis. Donna paused near Romana. “I’m going with him,” she said, gesturing toward where the older Doctor had been standing. “He needs the support, just waiting over there.”

Romana smiled and nodded, and Donna was gone too in a flash of light.

The Time Lady turned toward Rose and Clara. “Keep an eye on the Daleks for me?” she asked. “Let me know if there are any drastic changes.”

“Uh…” Rose began nervously, and Clara glanced over at the screen she was staring at. “I’m fairly certain this counts as ‘drastic changes,’” Rose continued. “Romana, there’s a whole army of them headed for the Citadel!”

 

 


	22. Chapter 22

Romana hurriedly jabbed at the controls. “Leela? Are you there?”

“I hear you - what is it, Romana?”

“This doesn’t seem right,” Martha broke in. “There aren’t any Time Lords here, or in the Omega Arsenal even. It’s _empty.”_

“There’s a squadron of Daleks approaching,” Romana warned. “I think they’re beginning their invasion of the Citadel, but there aren’t enough soldiers. Everyone must be out on the front lines, so the Panopticon’s deserted.”

A screen flickered on the console, and Clara leaned closer to see. “So where does that leave us?” the younger Doctor asked, an annoyed Narvin peering over his shoulder.

“We wait for the Daleks,” Romana said with a sigh. “Unfortunately. Rassilon and the others will either leave or fight if the attack gets this far, and the War Room will be open to us.”

“Did you get weapons?” Rose asked, addressing the comm link.

“Yes,” Vastra responded. “Leela was able to bring us right to the heart of the Omega Arsenal.”

“We can give the Daleks a very good fight,” said Leela, and Clara could almost hear her predatory grin. This would work, she reminded herself. They could hold their own against the Daleks long enough. Rose reached back and took Clara’s hand, and calming resolve flowed through her. Of _course_ this would work.

Romana glanced back at the radar screen. “There’s interference around the Eye, so I can’t tell you how many, but they’ve almost made it to the Panopticon, Leela. I’m going to try to hack into the vidcast cameras so I can at least see what’s going on down there.”

“Daleks!” Martha’s voice shouted, a ways away from the comm system. A flurry of weapons fire followed, and everyone waited nervously until Leela’s report echoed around the console room.

“We are all unharmed!” she said. “These weapons work well.” The whine of blaster fire intermittently screeched across the comm signal.

“Good. Doctor, Narvin, wait one microspan, and then transmat in.”

They nodded and moved off the video screen, quickly replaced by the older Doctor. “Is there anything we can do from here?” he asked.

Romana shook her head. “Just keep the Tardis ready. Mine has an improved subwave network which will be much harder for the Daleks to trace if they notice us communicating. We’ll keep your channel open so you know the situation, though.”

He sighed. “And Rose? Has anything --”

“Bad Wolf’s quiet,” she said. “Maybe you’re right, maybe I just needed to get you all here.”

“Ah, I’ve got the vidcast working!” Romana interrupted. She swung the Doctor’s screen around so he could see as well, as a second screen flickered - after a moment, the signal cleared to show a fragmented view of the Panopticon itself. Clara gasped. The room was incredible, with high arched ceilings and a raised dais that looked like it was fit for an emperor. The white and gold walls were already pitted with small blast craters, however, and a pillar had collapsed almost on top of the podium that extended out into the room. She could see the five who had transmatted to the surface on one side of the room, behind the remains of someone’s huge statue. Blasts of colored fire shot toward and from the entrance of the room, shadowy, distorted Dalek shapes emerging through the dust.

“What’s -- who are you?” It was the Doctor’s voice, the younger one, thrown off-guard by whatever they’d found in the War Room.

_It’s not empty?_

“What’s happening?” Romana asked hurriedly, switching comm signals.

“It’s not Rassilon, but we have company,” explained Narvin in a low mutter.

“What do you --” Romana sighed, exasperated, as the signal abruptly cut out.

“Next time, I’m going too,” she hissed. “This is so _frustrating.”_

“Romana!” It was Martha’s voice this time. Clara glanced back at the vidcast feed, but it didn’t seem like the Daleks had made much progress.

“What is it?”

“We think they’re going for the Eye!” she said. “Leela says the entrance is beneath the stage of the Panopticon, and it looks like that’s where the Daleks are headed.”

“Why would they want to go after the Eye?” Clara asked. “Do they know that we could…?”

“No, I’m sure they couldn’t know what we’re attempting,” Romana said. “But the Eye is such a valuable power source - the Daleks could be planning to use it to destroy Gallifrey from the inside, as far as we know. Martha, all of you, you have to keep them away from the Eye of Harmony no matter what.”

“They won’t get anywhere near it,” Leela growled.

Narvin’s voiced buzzed in, distorted, until the signal cleared. “-- Rassilon’s gone. This is the General, he --”

“Romanadvoratrelundar?” said an unfamiliar voice.

“Yes - what is --”

“I lead the War Council. Rassilon and the High Council disappeared completely as soon as the Daleks approached the Citadel. I’ve taken command of Gallifrey’s forces.”

“We don’t have much time, General.”

“As we’ve tried to tell him --” Narvin began.

“And I am well aware of the situation, Coordinator!” the other Time Lord interrupted. “But we’ve tried everything. It’s our job to drive the Daleks from the Capitol, and there’s no one else left to control our armies. We’re making this our last stand, now that Rassilon has sealed the High Council chambers.”

“We have a plan,” said the Doctor. “But you have to trust us.”

“Doctor!” the General exclaimed. “So, we have a former President, a treasonous Celestial Intervention Agent, and the most famous renegade on Gallifrey.”

“You don’t realize what Rassilon was planning!” Narvin shouted.

The General sighed. “Oh, I’m well aware. That’s why I’m willing to hear you out - what he’s planning now could be even worse.”

A distant explosion echoed across the comm link. “Androgar!” the General called. “Report!”

“The Daleks have breached the last transduction barrier,” said another Time Lord. “It’s only a matter of time before their entire force converges on the planet.”

“What’s Rassilon planning?” Romana asked urgently.

“I ordered a Time Lock set in place only a span ago. If this battle doesn’t end well, at least we can prevent the destruction of much of the larger universe by containing paradoxes here. Rassilon has been operating further and further out of our jurisdiction - and he’s just broken away from the War Council completely, bringing the High Council with him. I think he’s attempting to break the Time Lock somehow.”

“Then we have even more reason to move quickly. General, we think we can stop the war,” Romana started to explain.

_Silence._

“That’s impossible.”

“Listen, we think we have a way to put Gallifrey into a parallel dimension - a pocket universe, you will. Meanwhile, the Daleks destroy each other in their final assault.”

“We’d be lost, frozen. Cut off from the rest of the universe, forever!”

“Not forever. Just until the universe is safe and ready for us to return.”

“Trust me, General,” said the Doctor. “You can’t win this fight. We can save you.”

“But that would require an immense amount of power, let alone the calculations themselves.”

“We have a power source,” the older Doctor explained, “and that’s why you need to let us help.”

“Is that - there are _two_ of you? Oh Rassilon, what next…”

Romana rolled her eyes. “We’re going to use the Eye of Harmony,” she said. “But we need to drop the shields. Just for a moment, long enough to materialize two Tardises.”

“Impossible. The Daleks are attacking the Panopticon! If you drop the shields, they’ll get to the Eye and everything is lost.”

The older Doctor was the one to answer, out of a moment of quiet broken by the faint echoes of weapons fire. “This entire world, all of Gallifrey’s soldiers, leaders, civilians, children. They all will burn. Gallifrey will be set ablaze and obliterated by the Daleks at your gates, and I’m not going to let that happen again. No more, General. I’ve lost too many people, too many worlds. To many futures. Give us the few seconds we need and drop the shields, and I promise we can save this one.”

Clara held her breath as they waited for the General’s answer.

“Very well,” he said, and she could feel relief spread through the room. “But only,” he continued, “once the Daleks are cleared out of the Panopticon. However good this plan is, it will mean nothing if they are right behind you. Our armies are barely holding on as it is. I’ll open the shields, but you _must_ destroy the Daleks who are attacking the Eye of Harmony, at any cost.”


	23. Chapter 23

“Stop all the Daleks?” Martha shouted through the comm signal. “Romana, we’re barely holding them off!”

“I know. But the General won’t open the shields around the Eye of Harmony unless the Daleks in the Panopticon are destroyed - and he’s right. Being so close, the shield must register on their sensors, and they’ll know if it goes down and immediately transport to the Eye.”

“We shall do it, Romana,” Leela said, her voice low. “I think I have a plan.” The comm signal abruptly cut off, leaving Romana glaring at the Tardis controls in exasperation.

Rose hesitantly let go of Clara’s hand and walked forward until she was standing next to the Time Lady. “Romana?” she asked quietly. “I think maybe if Bad Wolf…”

A surge of panic rushed through Clara. “No _way,_ Rose!” she exclaimed, dashing forward to lean over the other side of the console. Romana was already shaking her head.

“Clara’s right. Bad Wolf could kill you, and we have other options.”

“We don’t know that it would kill me right away. How many times has Bad Wolf activated already, and I’ve been fine? It might happen eventually, but if I can get rid of the Daleks, then --”

 _“No,”_ said Clara, glaring at Romana, and if the Time Lady didn’t back her up on this --

“Rose, it’s out of the question.”

Clara relaxed slightly. Rose looked down at the screen where the Panopticon battle was shattering walls in eerie silence. “Alright,” she said. “If they can do it on their own.”

“I know they can,” Romana murmured. “Leela’s been fighting the Daleks with us as long as anyone.”

A static whine echoed around the console room and Clara winced as one of the screens abruptly flickered on. “Romana!” It was the older Doctor, his voice crackling with whatever interference was trying to block his signal. “They’re -- if you don’t -- _Daleks --”_

Romana’s eyes widened in sudden realization and she frantically hit a few levers on the console. “Everyone hold on!”

Clara almost fell into Rose, barely avoiding knocking them both over, as she reached for a railing to hang on to. The Tardis shook violently and twisted sideways as something exploded, sending a dull shockwave across the ship. “What’s happening?” Clara gasped.

“Dalek stealth ships!” Romana shouted. Another two screens flickered to life, one tracking the Doctor’s Tardis which was frantically keeping pace with them, another trained on the Dalek squadron slowly shimmering into view. Bright energy bolts shot past them, sometimes impacting their Tardis with a shudder of dark fire. “They must have picked up our communications. Rose, hold that lever --” she gestured at something on the console. “Clara, if the number on that readout reaches five hundred, hit the button right next to it.”

The two of them frantically rushed to stand around the console, almost crashing to the floor again as the Tardis shot upwards. “Do we have any weapons?” Rose asked.

“They’re still offline from when we crashed on Earth!”

The Doctor flickered back onscreen. “We’ve got nothing over here. We’ll just have to evade them somehow.”

 _“How?”_ shouted Donna. “And _why_ don’t we have any weapons?”

“This is a Type 40; it’s not _my_ fault!”

Sparks shot across the screen and the Doctor ducked out of the way. “We can’t dematerialize!” Romana shouted over the sound of another explosion, and Clara couldn’t tell anymore whether it was from the Daleks’ weapons on the hull of the ship or something inside the Tardis shattering into flames and fragmented smoke. A second blast knocked them all back into the secondary consoles surrounding the time rotor, and Clara scrambled to her feet as the Tardis twisted beneath them. “If we enter the Time Vortex,” Romana explained, “we’ll lose contact and temporal proximity with the teams on the surface!”

“Is there a way to repair the weapons systems here before the Daleks catch us?” Clara asked.

“We could try, but there’s no way it would be enough.” Romana looked panicked, and Clara realized with a start that they might not have a way out of this.

And then the glow of Bad Wolf flickered to life.

Rose stood over the console, staring at screens of Daleks that Clara wasn’t even sure she could see with eyes of molten gold. “Rose, you _can’t--”_

Seemingly unaffected by the shaking Tardis, the other woman raised her hands outward, palms up. The solar fire that flowed along her whole body abruptly coalesced in front of her, before shooting outward in a nova of gold light. Bad Wolf’s explosion, combined with the Daleks’ latest attack, sent Clara flying into the table behind her, the light overpowering her vision. As she gasped air back into starved lungs, everything slowly faded back to normal, and Clara realized that the Tardis was no longer crashing abruptly through space.

They were drifting, the explosions silenced. Romana was stumbling to her feet nearby, and Rose --

_Rose?_

Clara scrambled forward until she was kneeling over her, panic building until she realized Rose was still breathing. She looked up to find Romana leaning on the console for support, a wordless question hanging in the air.

“I think she’s alright,” Clara murmured, and the Time Lady nodded. Flicking a switch on the panel in front of her, Romana opened a new comm signal to the Doctor’s Tardis, most of the video screens damaged beyond repair.

“Doctor? Report.”

“They’re gone,” he said, his voice low. “Was it--”

“Did Bad Wolf stop them?” Donna broke in. “Is Rose--”

“Yes. Rose is unconscious, but we don’t think it’s any worse than it has been.”

The Doctor sighed, relieved. “What about the surface?”

“I’m trying to contact them now.” Romana glanced up at a larger screen on the wall as the video feed from the Panopticon slowly flickered back into view. “I can’t see -- I’ll let you know. As soon as the shield is down, I’ll dematerialize, and you need to follow right behind.”

She cut communications as the Doctor started to acknowledge her, her attention fixed on the half-destroyed console.

Clara turned her gaze back to the woman lying in her arms. “Rose?” she breathed, but got no response. Without looking up, she asked Romana, “Will we still be able to get to the Eye of Harmony?”

“We can still fly,” she responded. “Almost everything else isn’t working, but we can land at the Eye when we need to. I only hope it’s soon, because if they find us again we haven’t got a chance -- ah!” Something mechanical chirped and Romana leaned closer to the console -- intent on the screen on the wall, Clara realized, as she looked up too to watch. “Leela, can you hear me?” the Time Lady asked.

“I hear you -- Romana, I have a way to kill the Daleks. I found something in the Omega Arsenal.”

Romana sighed in relief. “Good. We’re running out of time up here; they found a way to track our transmissions.”

“You are… not going to like this plan, Romana. I am sorry.” Clara could hear muffled explosions and the shriek of weapons fire in the background, in time with bursts of light on the viewscreen. So much of the Panopticon had been damaged by the Daleks that it was hard to pick out where everyone was amidst the chaos, but after a moment she smiled as she realized she could see everyone in the smoke, still firing back -- no one had been hit then, at least not badly.

Romana, meanwhile, had walked out from behind the console to stand directly in front of the viewscreen. “What do you mean?”

“The weapon is _broken._ You must transmat Martha, Vastra, Jenny, and Mickey back to your Tardis.”

Romana started shaking her head slowly as she realized what Leela was implying. “No, I’m not leaving you with --”

“I have to be next to it to set it off. There was a timer, but it does not work anymore.”

“Leela, _no_. There has to be another way, there’s _always_ another way --”

“This is the end of the war, Romana.” Her voice was warm. “We all make sacrifices for the ones most important to us. And if I do this, we not only can win the Time War; we can save our entire world.”

_“Please don’t.”_

Romana’s words were quiet, broken, desperate. Clara realized with a start as she saw the pain on the Time Lady’s face that it was up to her to do something -- Leela wouldn’t go through with her plan until the other four were safe, and there was no way Romana would be able to force herself to transmat them back, knowing that. Clara took a deep breath and tried to will back the tears that were threatening to fall, and she carefully moved Rose, still unconscious, aside so she could stand. The transmat beacon was near the console and she quietly reached out for it. Hesitating for a moment, she tapped in the command to bring the other four home -- not to Romana’s Tardis, yet, but to the Doctor’s.

As they flickered away in a brief flare of blue light on the viewscreen, Romana spun around to see Clara holding the transmat device. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, but the Time Lady only looked away. She knew as well as Clara did that they didn’t have a choice.

She could see Leela on the viewscreen, near the Daleks, illuminated by reflected light from fires and energy bolts.

“Thank you. For… for my life, here.” Her voice crackled over the comm system’s interference and the screen flickered. “For making this my home. You and Narvin… you need each other. You _will_ need each other. Remember that.”

“Leela, I --”

“I am sorry, Romana.”

The comm signal cut out as a brilliant flash whited out the holographic screen, leaving behind golden-red trails of flame and embers as the screen flickered and vanished.

_“No!”_

Romana’s scream was full of heartache and loss, and Clara sank back to kneel on the floor next to Rose. She was dimly aware that she was crying, and as Rose blinked back into the waking world, Clara felt like she was looking at her through a fog.

“What happened?” she murmured, slowly sitting up.

Clara couldn’t answer; she just shook her head and leaned forward to wrap her arms around Rose. Over the other woman’s shoulder, she watched Romana, who was still standing frozen, one arm outstretched to where the viewscreen used to be. A voice echoed from the console -- the younger Doctor. “The General’s dropping the shield! Romana, they did it! How did -- oh! The shield is down; we’re transmatting, we’ll meet you there!”

The signal cut out, and Romana flinched at the unknowing joy in the Doctor’s voice. In a sudden rush she spun back to the time rotor, her face set and resolute, ignoring her own tears. She activated the channel to the other Tardis. “Doctor, the shield is down! We have to go! _Now!”_

With a whirring roar, the Tardis shuddered into flight, and Clara buried her face in Rose’s shoulder until, in a heartbeat, there was --

Silence.

They’d landed.


	24. Chapter 24

Rose stood on the top balcony of the Doctor’s Tardis control room, looking out over the clear glass railing but not focusing on anything in particular. It was quiet, calm. The walls seemed to shimmer sometimes, and Rose didn’t know if it was some sort of residual energy in the fabric of the machine or simply a trick of the light from the time rotor. The only other person in the control room was the Doctor himself - _he_ r Doctor - and he was busy on the lower level finishing setting up their connection to the Eye of Harmony.

They’d landed only a few minutes ago. Down below the Citadel, the chaos of above was blocked out, and it was both reassuring and a bit eerie to not be able to hear any Daleks. Consciously, though, she knew that they didn’t have much time left.

And Leela was dead.

Rose felt an hollow space inside. Clara had told her about Leela’s sacrifice, and even though she couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud, she knew she could have prevented this. She could have Bad Wolf-ed the Daleks, or the set off the weapon itself after transmatting Leela away, or, or, _something_. But no, she hadn’t done anything at the beginning when she knew she could, and then she’d been too weak to cope with Bad Wolf and blacked out when they needed her later.

She hadn’t even known Leela very long, and she couldn’t imagine how Romana must feel. Or Narvin. Or even the Doctor.

Romana had shut out absolutely everything but what was necessary, focusing only on the Eye of Harmony and their plan. It was… unsettling, hearing her voice, alternately devoid of emotion and echoing with repressed anger. She wasn’t even the one to tell Narvin; that job had fallen to Clara, while the Time Lady immediately disappeared into the Doctor’s Tardis when they landed in order to find some Gallifreyan technology that Rose had no hope of comprehending. With three Time Lords working on accessing the Eye in tense silence, everyone else scattered amongst both Tardises.

“Rose?”

It was Clara, as the door on the other side of the wall opened with a swish of air.

“Hey.”

They joined hands almost unconsciously as the other woman leaned on the railing next to her. “Martha, Mickey, and Donna are in the conference room,” Clara said. “Vastra and Jenny will be there soon; they said they wanted to talk to the younger Doctor first.”

Rose nodded absently. Anyone _not_ supposed to be in this time frame - that is, everyone except the other Gallifreyans - needed to be in the safety of the Doctor’s Tardis when the Eye was activated. In order to not get pulled into the pocket universe themselves, they’d have to dematerialize immediately. And, to make matters even more complicated, with the Tardis console opened up like it would have to be in order to join its fragment of the Eye with the original, it would be too dangerous for anyone but the Doctor to be in the console room when it happened. At least, according to him. So, they’d all wait it out in the conference room. Rose sighed in frustration.

“There has to be something more we can do,” she muttered.

Clara smiled wryly. “I know. I feel the same way. But it’s up to them now - this kind of technology is beyond any of us. There’s nothing to fight, nothing to run from.”

“Just, waiting.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you really think it will work?” Rose asked. She’d been so sure, so confident, but Leela had been the first to speak up and say that there must be another way, a better way; with her gone, that certainty had died with her.

“I do,” said Clara. “Really. This is what’s supposed to happen, I think.” She sighed. “We fought back. We told the universe we weren’t giving up, and now we’re going to prove it.”

Rose turned back to look down at her, and Clara met her eyes. With a smile, she let go of the railing and wrapped her arms around Rose, who relaxed into the hug. She closed her eyes, one hand on Clara’s back and the other tangled in her hair. “I love you, you know,” she murmured.

Clara hummed against her shoulder, and Rose could feel her smile. “I love you too.”

Pulling back just enough, Clara tilted her head up to kiss her softly, briefly. “We should get going; they’re probably almost done,” she said, as they heard a crash from somewhere below the console.

Rose nodded. “Just, another minute. I’ll be there soon.”

“Alright. And I promise, when this is over, we’ll get Bad Wolf figured out, and we’ll talk about, well, this. Us.”

Rose grinned as Clara walked away, the door sliding closed again behind her.

She glanced back down into the console room, and reluctantly started down the spiral stairs. “Doctor?” she asked into the apparently-empty room. Where had he disappeared to?

Another crash was her answer. Rose crouched down, peering below the glass. “Doctor?” she asked again, seeing movement.

“Rose? I -- one moment --” He scrambled up and out of a hatchway that led into the center part of the console itself, emerging back onto the floor in front of her. “I just finished. I think. Hopefully. Um --” Something sparked behind him and he winced. “I need the final connection to Romana set up; this won’t hold together long. Could you go give her this? I need to, ah --” He reached back inside the hatchway, frantically catching something and jamming it back into the machinery before it could separate itself completely.

Rose laughed softly. “Sure,” she said, standing back up as he reached back out with one hand to give her a small, glittering device. She hesitated. “And, Doctor?”

“Hm?”

“This’ll work. I promise.”

“...Thank you, Rose.”

She turned away and walked back to the Tardis entrance as Vastra and Jenny hurried back inside, and she braced herself for who-knows-what as she pushed the doors open. To her surprise, only one Time Lord was standing in front of the obelisk that housed their access point to the Eye. Romana didn’t seem to register her appearance until the Tardis doors closed with a thud. The Time Lady jumped slightly, looking up from whatever she’d been typing into a makeshift control panel to her left.

“Where are --”

“Narvin and the Doctor?” Romana finished. “Narvin and I must still be on-planet when we activate this. Gallifrey will need leadership, Rassilon is nowhere to be found, and I don’t trust the General to help our world recover properly from this war. The Doctor, on the other hand, can’t be trapped here. We know -- _you_ know -- that he wasn’t.”

“Oh! They went to find his Tardis!”

Romana nodded, and Rose glanced over at where her Tardis had been, now only empty space.

“Narvin knew where they’d left it, and we don’t have much time left.”

“The Doctor sent me to give you this,” she said, her hand outstretched with the glittering device in her palm. Romana took it and began integrating it with the mechanism next to her. “What about the Doctor’s timeline?” Rose asked. “He can’t know about any of this - the younger one, I mean - but he will.”

“Timelines protect themselves,” Romana explained. “He’s met himself and created a paradox, giving himself foreknowledge that he didn’t have the first time. In this case, we’re pretty sure that once Gallifrey is sent into the pocket universe and the Time Lock is broken, his memory of these events will be erased. It might require regeneration, but that was supposed to happen anyway.”

“What about my Doctor?”

“You all should be able to leave safely. This is in his future, so there’s nothing to ‘fix’, as it were.”

Rose nodded slowly. “That makes sense…” She glanced over at the obelisk. It seemed strange to her that something so simple would house something as powerful as the Eye. “Is that really all the protection it has?” she asked. “That shield? And now you can just… open it?”

Romana laughed bitterly. “Not exactly. But for me, yes.”

“What do you mean?”

“Throughout all of our history, since Rassilon first harnessed the Eye of Harmony as a power source, anyone who would open it would need not only the retinal scan of a Time Lord - well, except for a certain incident a while back - but also the Rod of Rassilon, an ancient artifact given in turn to each Time Lord President. When he was brought back, he was too arrogant to think that might have _changed.”_

“Oh - _you_ changed it.”

Romana nodded. “Gallifrey was once… _reset_ , in a way, from an earlier timeline. I had to reset the Eye as well, and for anyone _else_ to activate it, yes, they’d still need the Rod, which Rassilon, of course, has - but just in case, I ensured that my bioprint alone was enough.”

Rose could feel power emanating from the Eye, below the obelisk. It tugged on Bad Wolf, and she backed away a step, unsettled. “Is it almost ready?”

“Yes. You should get back to the Tardis.”

Rose hesitated. “Romana?”

The Time Lady looked over at her.

“I’m… I’m sorry. I should have been able to…”

“I don’t blame you, Rose,” she murmured.

Something flashed on the control panel and she immediately refocused with a worried frown, which quickly turned to shock. “Oh _no,”_ she breathed.

Rose could feel Bad Wolf humming inside her as panic built. “What is it?”

“There’s not enough power,” Romana said in disbelief. “There’s not - it won’t work.”

 _“What?”_ Rose leaned over the console, but nothing onscreen made any sense to her. “But I thought the Doctor’s Tardis --”

“It’s still not enough energy. We… there’s nothing I can do.”

With a sickening jolt, Rose knew exactly what they could do. What _she_ could do.

“Yes, there is.”

Romana looked up at her with a start, a wordless question on her face.

“There’s only one power that comes directly from the same source as the Eye itself,” Rose said. “It’s me. It’s Bad Wolf.”

Glancing back at the console, Romana was silent for a moment. “You’re right,” she said after what seemed like forever in a few single heartbeats. “I think -- I think you’re right. Bad Wolf might be enough.”

Rose closed her eyes, trying to calm her breathing. After all this, after they were so close, this was it. This _was_ why she was here, and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. It was either her own life, or all of Gallifrey. And there was no choice.

“Rose, I’m so sorry.”

All the panic inside calmed into something steady, stable, resolute. The thought of Clara almost sent her back over the edge into spiraling darkness, but there was nothing she could do now to prevent that loss. The loss of a future she could never hold.

“What would I need to do?” she asked, her own voice feeling disconnected.

“The plan was to key in the program and set the Eye to open on a microspan’s delay, so I could leave in time. When the Eye of Harmony emerges… you’ll have to connect with it somehow. I’d assume Bad Wolf’s power would be drawn to it automatically.”

Rose nodded. “It will be,” she said, certain. “The Doctor -- you’ll need to…”

“I -- yes,” she got out. “He’ll be focused on balancing the Tardis’s power. I’ll set the delay longer, and talk to him before I leave. I can… I’ll distract him, tell him you went back into the Tardis behind me.”

Rose looked back at the blue box, the time machine she realized she’d never step into again. “There’s no time for me to say goodbyes. Not to anyone,” she said quietly.

Romana nodded, and looked like she was about to reach out, before keying something into the control panel. “It’ll open in five microspans,” she murmured.

 _“Thank you_ , Romana,” Rose breathed.

“Thank you, Rose Tyler. You’re saving us all.”

 

 


	25. Chapter 25

Something was wrong.

Rose should have been there by now. Clara paced back and forth near the door to the conference room, finally flinging it open and hurrying back down the winding hallways toward the console room. Rose was just… still talking to the Doctor, probably. Or the whole thing got delayed because there was a problem with the connection to the Eye of Harmony, or something. She eased the door open and peered past the time rotor - Rose was nowhere to be seen, but a different blonde was heading for the Tardis doors. Romana must have been saying goodbye to the Doctor, she realized, which meant they were almost ready.

_So, where’s Rose?_

Clara frowned and almost ran into the Doctor as he scrambled up the spiral staircase, just in time to prevent something on the console itself from shaking apart. The entire room was humming with energy, sparks dancing along the walls.

“Clara!” He yelled. “The countdown’s started; you can’t be in here!”

“I’m looking for Rose!”

Silence.

“...What do you mean? You must have seen her on your way here.”

Clara shook her head, a feeling of dread growing inside. “Doctor, she’s not in the conference room. And I haven’t seen her since I left her talking with you.”

“Romana said… _oh no.”_ He made to jump back down the stairs, but a small explosion sent him frantically leaping back to the console, one hand holding a lever down and the other keying in commands to a control panel faster than Clara could follow.

“‘Oh no’ _what_ , Doctor?!”

“The power source - it must have - aaaah!” He was knocked down in a shower of sparks as Clara ducked back to avoid it. As he climbed back to his feet, he looked at the door helplessly. “It’s too late, if I don’t stay - she must must have needed - Bad Wolf --”

 _“She’s still out there,”_ Clara gasped, eyes wide, heart racing. She dodged past the Doctor and half-fell down the spiral staircase, sprinting for the door.

“Clara, _no!”_ the Doctor shouted desperately. “You’ll die!”

 _“She’ll_ die if I don’t help her!” she yelled back over her shoulder.

“There’s nothing you can do!”

_“Just watch me.”_

_“Clara!!”_

The door slammed shut behind her, blocking out the chaos inside the Tardis. Outside, things were still deceptively calm - Rose spun around at the noise, a look of shock and fear distorting her face.

“Clara? _No,_ you can’t be here!”

“I’m not letting you do this alone!”

The other woman was crying, her tears shimmering with a hint of the gold fire flickering inside. “Clara please, there’s less than a microspan before the Eye opens, you have to get back --”

“You can’t do this, Rose, you’ll die! Bad Wolf will take everything you have left!”

_“I know!”_

She was shaking, and Clara, who was now standing only a meter away, tried to reach out, only to be pushed away by a shock of Bad Wolf energy. “There’s no other choice,” Rose murmured. “The Tardis wasn’t enough. This is the only way to save Gallifrey, and all of you.”

“Then let me take it _with_ you! With both of us, we have a chance!”

The control panel beeped and Clara realized with a flash of panic that the countdown had finished. A heartbeat later, the entire room shuddered as something under the obelisk split open, something that felt like the fabric of time itself. Brilliant white light started to swirl out of what must have been the Eye of Harmony, and Rose _screamed_. Bad Wolf’s gold fire mingled with the white glow, turning the air around them into pure energy. Pain tore at Clara and she threw herself forward to take hold of both of Rose’s hands.

Rose’s eyes shot open, and as Clara’s gaze locked with molten gold, she collapsed at the shock of the power that now realized it could use her as a conduit. The light swirling around them kept her upright, the two of them almost floating in nothing as Bad Wolf tugged and twisted at the empty space at the heart of the void between space and time. Clara could feel everything - the gold sparks pulling on her own lifeforce, the Bad Wolf entity that lived and grew in the heartbeats outside time, the burning of a thousand galaxies in the fury of the Time War and the pain of losing them - Rose’s fear, and something warmer, deeper - love. Hope. The light, the burning, that was what Rose had seen, what she lost in the glow of the sun and the power that had reclaimed her life.

Clara couldn’t breathe, and as fast as she tried to draw in air she could feel Bad Wolf pull it back out of her. Nothing, something, everything was being taken from her. Her energy, her life, her heartbeat. She could feel Rose’s hands locked with hers, and she focused on that, on the one thing that could ground her. She knew the same thing was happening to the other woman, Bad Wolf taking her apart in order to fuel itself, and if she hadn’t been there too, Rose would be gone already. And it would be both of them soon, she realized, and she had tried, she had tried to save her, but this power was far bigger than both of them. Pain spiked through her and Clara wanted to scream but she had no voice left. One moment, two, three --

Something shattered. The planet shook, time and space shifting around them, and again, again the light shot outward in a supernova’s halo, going _sideways_ into something not of this dimension.

And then everything was dark.

………………………………..

Clara could feel again. Everything hurt, and she couldn’t move, but she could feel the ground she was lying on, and her breath, and her heartbeat, and Rose’s hand in hers. A comforting mechanical hum played around the edges of her awareness. She couldn’t see - her eyes were closed, she realized after a moment. She blinked slowly, hesitantly, and the blurred world around her swam into focus - slowly pulsing lights glowing softly on the ceiling above her.

“Rose?” she murmured, her voice cracking as she tried to turn her head to look beside her. The other woman was lying face-up on the floor just as she was, and at the sound, Rose opened her eyes as well, wincing slightly.

“I’m…”

“We made it,” Clara whispered.

“We made it.” A smile slowly grew on Rose’s face, and she looked over to meet her eyes. Shifting onto her side, she reached up with her free hand to brush her fingers along Clara’s face. Despite the ache that movement caused, Clara leaned forward to kiss her, grinning with slowly growing laughter against her lips. The relief that spread through her was the most amazing thing she’d felt in a long time.

Rose gasped suddenly. “Clara, it’s _gone,”_ she said. “Bad Wolf. I can’t feel it anymore.” She launched herself forward to wrap her arms around Clara, laughing in disbelief. “It’s _gone!”_

They tried to sit up together, Clara finally looking around at their surroundings. They were back in the Tardis somehow - most of the walls were cracked, and wires dangled in various places, but the room was still and calm, and they were definitely back in the Tardis console room.

Rose pulled back and looked at her with pure joy.

“You’re sure?” Clara asked.

She nodded. “The Eye of Harmony must have taken all that was left of Bad Wolf,” she said. “Clara, if you hadn’t been there…”

Clara couldn’t stop smiling. She closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against Rose’s, seeing only her. _“I love you,”_ she murmured.

“I love you too.” Rose’s lips were warm and soft against hers, and the moment could have lasted either for a heartbeat or an eternity.

“So... how did we get back here?” Clara asked.

“I think… I think the last remnants of Bad Wolf were pulled back to its nearest compatible source - the Tardis’s own Eye of Harmony - and we got pulled along with it.”

Clara peered around the room. “Wait... Rose, where’s the Doctor?”

“Hm?” Rose furrowed her brow as they stood up. “That’s a good question,” she muttered. “Doctor?”

No response.

Clara gestured wordlessly to the frosted glass platform, and together, hands still linked, they climbed up the spiral stairs. “Doctor?” It was Clara asking this time, but they still got no answer. Up here, the time rotor whirred quietly, sending soft beams of light dancing off the railings and panels. There was plenty of damage from its connection to Gallifrey’s Eye of Harmony, but not much more than when she’d seen it last. She paused and leaned on the railing, looking out at the rest of the Tardis. She wondered if it would redecorate again soon.

“Oh no,” Rose breathed. The other woman had stopped on the other side of the console and was looking down at something, and Clara hurried to join her.

Clara gasped. “What happened?”

“I should have known,” Rose murmured. “He lied. He said that he was the only one who could withstand being in the console room once the connection was set up, but even he couldn’t. This is… this is what happened last time, when he took Bad Wolf out of me. Even a Time Lord can’t be exposed to that much power without… consequences. There’s only one way out.”

“Regeneration,” said Clara.

Lying on the floor near the time rotor was an older man, still in his brown jacket and bowtie. Curly grey hair matched eyebrows set in a perpetual scowl. Even unconscious, probably knocked out during the process of opening the Eye of Harmony or during regeneration itself, he looked more serious than the Doctor she knew. More… alien, to her.

Clara reached out and took Rose’s hand again, as they looked down at the future they’d now have to face together, and the man who would need to find the world they’d hidden safely away.

A new day, a new journey, and a new Doctor.

……………………………………………..

_Epilogue._

……………………………………………..

The room was cold, and white, and uninviting.

She took a moment, trying to remember. This place wasn’t familiar, and she didn’t understand - she started, surprised, as a door on the far wall clicked open. She was in a chair, but…

_How did I get here?_

A man in a tan suit entered the room, but before he could sit down at the desk in front of her, she leapt out of her chair and grabbed the knife attached to her belt. The man yelped and tried to duck out of the way, but she held him back against the wall, knife ready at his throat. “Where am I?” she growled. “Who are you?”

“I, uh, you’re not supposed to be able to do that. You’re… Leela, right? Um. I should probably fix the program for incoming --”

Leela narrowed her eyes and he winced.

“Alright, okay, I’m Seb,” he said. “As for where you are… it has a lot of names. You could call it the Promised Land, the Underworld… I’m partial to the Nethersphere. Anyway,” he paused as she relaxed her hold on the knife a bit, and he slid off to the side and hurried to the opposite end of his desk. “You’re dead, and this is what’s next.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooooo yep, this is the last chapter! There WILL, however, be a sequel :D (hence, multiple cliffhangers haha sorry.) Thank you so so so much for reading, especially to people who left comments. I'm so glad you liked my fic and hopefully i've converted a few shippers XD


	26. Chapter 26

Okay so this is actually just an author's note for the end, with some announcements. Here's the text from my tumblr post about it; idk how many would see it there though so i'll put it here at the end of the fic too:

Soooooo i’ve come to the conclusion that i should abandon working on the sequel to By the Light of Burning Galaxies. I’m really sorry, and i know i said i’d do it, but there are a few reasons:

\- Every time i think about it i’m like ‘maybe i should reread the first one’ and then i cringe because i know for a fact that if i do i’ll feel bad about my writing cause it was from a while ago, and i’d want to get rid of it/edit it/rewrite it and it’s kind of too late now. 

\- i’m not excited about the main plot anymore. Like, I took too long to write this and now even though i still like Impossible Wolf as a thing, i’ve kind of run out of inspiration. And i realized i cared a lot more about the two side-plots.

\- One of those side-plots is Gallifrey based, and tbh, what i really want to be doing is writing Gallifrey fics.

\- I’m not really comfortable writing the romance storyline for Impossible Wolf anymore. I started/planned/wrote most of By the Light before I got into a relationship myself, but now that that relationship happened and is over, i’m just kind of iffy about the whole thing. I realized I was trying to avoid writing certain things in the fic, and given that Rose and Clara’s relationship was originally the point of the fic, that’s not good.

\- The sequel would likely be just as long as the original, and that feels really overwhelming right now, and the fact that I haven’t been working on it makes me feel bad about writing anything at all, so then I just don’t write. And that’s bad.

So, yeah. I feel kinda bad about this cause I purposefully left a lot of dangling plot stuff in the first one cause it had been planned to have a sequel from the beginning, and I know I promised. If anyone wants to know generally what would have happened, or get answers to some of the unanswered stuff, feel free to ask me about it ^^

So, i went to post this here and i saw how many kudos and comments this fic actually has and i just wanted to say thank you /so much/ for your support.


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